












































.A v 

4^ * 

/M.^ Y 

» ° 0 

s ^ r V^-o^/ x V*v^^ ^ 

o- > a° v v * Y * °/ > V 

* -V ATS ' S 'P J . . *• <? ca *• 




, V ♦ a s o 3 v V 
// C‘ \> ^ " 


<p 

V 

% °o G- . 

■? , ^ 

•’"o o* = 

«■ 

O A, X 

> <$r '^U d- 

V & L 

V’ * 1 “ 0 *> > 

. ' N~ .<3 ^ _ -v A “ a. 

• _/T...; .<*^- >..... v • •' •>*. ....*,. 


■i <J> 

* <>. v 

* o Cr ° a\ 

•>» NT V * «■ 
9 * v # V V 

-v Cv 

/ 'p 


^ 0 o ® 

i ^ " ' V c »* , V * 0 N 0 , 

* 0 V . s s ' * c* V * v * 0 /■ ' «> 

is ^ *t£mb* ' *>. - r ^ » 

A. O t< 

’V' ° 




o 

^ ^ • S' ■» - A 

V y f) , A ^ ^0' < % <\ 

o° VV* -- 

j- '7'V O^ 1 *» jC (7 i//X/' ’>* $ © /w 

* A > * •* o o x * ^ 

,0 o. * 

■y \ y<> ^ 





si -t, > ^ 

V *- 


^ 0 *“<S 

' V y 0 * * A . 
« 0 0‘ , c 

^ /A v '^s^vwinfe ’., 'p. <•»’ /mu///,** r c < " 

^s/ 1 o 0 V 

V • ^ ^ ^ 

* V ’ K 0 ' v< ,*.,%*•" r ;/; o--;% 

*+#* -'mm,* %$ - 

^ o a^v o 

^ 'y Vi - * v? V * 

• v <-> ,> kg ^ ' V -5M//IBV—* . 

1 * mw0s> + ... a ^ ^ 




V aV - 

if* << V 


, . o> ■/;> •" 

> ^ t «o o ^ o N V ^ * <^> ^ -t . 

'>**"*^a- . V . A '* 



AN "•> 

r <f>. Cp *» 

* ^ v „ @ 

v 0 o. * ^ 


'<<■ 



























t ay 

“v 


0 « X 



- A ^ 

•/« _ . * Xv s' ' /✓ ■ , » < 

£ si:'~*+ l "\£ v« 

' a. ^ * 


z 


\\ X </> ° 
SV < 



•\ 




A* % 



V. 1 » 4 



xO O v 


.0 



^ ■£?’ * qV '- ✓ 

C> f,° * ..cYArY „ X> 



> 




"° '%4 


■V 


■ &*%. V 


* x°°« 

%atg>a. ./V 1 ' r: *.;/\-•. 

*o «, A * 

> A', 


<A><^ 

? >«v * 


V’SSSSrV' ■ 'v "tW* „*v - ✓ - 

f- 7 ^ S ^ .v.«, ^ ’ /,° NC ^ % 14 A vX v" V 

^ A* ° c. * * .\P * ** 


,} o o x 


A7 


S 

s '0CS 3 ^ "* (v ^*. <*• 

'*r%’* y- - %% 

o "'*'%• V p \p„ > 

* % # * 

</' ,^V <B 






0 ? ^ 


'*© 0 



o 4 'J 

-V ~0 •'-■ *” | ,, \'vN''i N 

,,, *^°v'V/^’" ,, *v'^’ i * 

,p A * ,#w3, * V* v, -A 
**>. CA Ar, .\Y ^ 


r .V ^ % 

* n <u *'♦. 

,0^ e 0 N r; * 




^ & 


r '>* a\ 

“" ^ V s 


,A X <* c 1 * * v o 

iA X /y>2-, ^ V 

e •v- ms Jr //?, 


* A ^ 3 

P V 3 ^ * 

Vi?* k * a p^.. 
5 o 0 ' ^ 

* t *. N, \ X y ' •'^ / 1 ‘ *- 



'* - - ^ 0 

v * o *" ^ « • A ^ \f° s * * r ^ # 3 h o J \ 

/ ^ v 0 p ^ .0 . s -v C‘ V * 

" « 5, ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 






^ .v> ^ 

Y ^ **([%?£ * ° 0 4 ^ 5 W.A -V 

+a v : £Sm& * *° o’* x a. 4 1 . 4Hgt* - ^ 




rp 'V f\ 

^ » 8 i \ * 4.° , * 

v0‘ s s ',, ^ V ^ 

A * <? A.V ^ 

cP .< V 


0 v0 ? ' 

V-v \> - \ 


cP \ 


A x 

x x> x 


,^ X * 


//""•A 

c . * ^ A - x' 

' ^ > ,, 
; #°* * 


* A A- '» 

•^." J o.^\X .. <X", 



r\V . 0 N t a ^> 

G° V f 



c . ,^ r 

f o i ' ~" v> ) .' , ‘»/ '> '' ,0" . 

■^. j$ ?€!t 3 b.\ A„> 4 ¥a; %. ,<£ *: 

























































MONSIEUR JONQUELLE 

PREFECT OF POLICE OF PARIS 


By 

MELVILLE DAVISSON POST 


MONSIEUR JONQUELLE: 
PREFECT OF POLICE OF PARIS 

THE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL¬ 
TEACHER 

THE SLEUTH OF 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 

THE MYSTERY AT THE 
BLUE VILLA 

UNCLE ABNER, 

MASTER OF MYSTERIES 


These Are Appleton Books 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
Publishers New York 






j 

MONSIEUR JONQUELLE 

PREFECT OF POLICE OF PARIS 

BY 

MELVILLE DAVISSON POST 

AUTHOR OF “UNCLE ABNER,” “THE SLEUTH OF ST. JAMES’S SQUARE,” 
“THE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL-TEACHER,” ETC. 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXIII 



V 




D. 


COPYRIGHT, IQ23, BY 


APPLETON AND COMPANY 


Copyright, 19 is. by The Star Company 
Copyright, 1922, by The Pictorial Review Company 
Copyright, 1922, by The Crowell Publishing Company 
Copyright, 1913, 1918, by The Curtis Publishing Company 
Copyright, 1921, by The Consolidated Magazines Corporatiow 
(The Red Book Magazine) 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

OCT -4 1923 -1 

©C1A76017 4 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER TAGS 

I. The Great Cipher .i 

II. Found in the Fog.28 

III. The Alien Corn.47 

IV. The Ruined Eye.96 

V. The Haunted Door. 113 

VI. Blucher's March.136 

VII. The Woman on the Terrace . . . 157 

VIII. The Triangular Hypothesis . . . 177 

IX. The Problem of the Five Marks . . 198 

X. The Man with Steel Fingers . . . 220 

XI. The Mottled Butterfly.244 

XII. The Girl with the Ruby .... 268 

















MONSIEUR JONQUELLE 

PREFECT OF POLICE OF PARIS 

I .—The Great Cipher 

It was a night of illusions. The whole world 
was unreal. The city could not be seen. There 
was a sort of fairy vista extending over the! 
gardens across the bit of park into the haze, 
pierced by the narrow white shaft of the Na¬ 
tional Monument extending into the sky. 

There was a heavy odor of jessamine and 
honeysuckle lying about the southern portico of 
the Executive Mansion. But there were no 
lights. The whole of the portico was in heavy 
shadow. A big, strong, masculine voice, culti¬ 
vated and firm, was speaking. 

“I am glad that business of your embassy 
brought you to America, Monsieur Jonquelle,” 
it said, “because I wanted to ask you about that 
last expedition of Chauvannesh I knew Chau- 
vannes in South Africa. He was a first-class 
man. What was the mystery about his death? 
The current report at the time could not have 
been the truth. It was too fantastic.” 


i 


Monsieur Jonquelle 


One might have made out the figure of the 
Frenchman by looking closely in the dim light. 
He sat in a long chair, his legs extended, a 
cigarette, unlighted, moving in his fingers. His 
voice was low and clear when he spoke, like one 

engaged with a reflection. 

“It was all the truth, Excellency,” he said, 

“as we now know.” 

The big voice interrupted: “That fantastic 
story!” 

The Frenchman’s voice did not change. 

“The truth about it,” he said, “is even more 
fantastic than the current story of the time. No¬ 
body believed it. Nobody could have believed it. 
When his journal finally came in, everybody 
thought Chauvannes had gone mad before the 
end. The things he wrote down simply could 
not have happened!” 

He paused. “But it was every word the truth. 

. . . There are the emeralds in the Louvre.” 

The big man beyond Monsieur Jonquelle, ob¬ 
scured by the thick shadow, made an exclama¬ 
tion of astonishment. 

“The emeralds,” he said, “are of course proof 
of the fact that Chauvannes found some evi¬ 
dences of the thing he was after. But his journal 
could not have been the truth. The man who 
wrote the closing pages of that journal must 
have been mad.” 


2 






The Great Cipher 

The Frenchman replied with no change in his 
voice. 

“Excellency,” he said, “the man who wrote 
the closing pages of that journal was not only 
sane, but he was so clever that I have never 
ceased to admire him. He was in a desperate 
position, from which, he knew perfectly well, 
there was no escape, and he undertook to do a 
thing that not only required the soundest intelli¬ 
gence, but it also required a degree of cleverness 
that has not been equaled by anybody. I feel 
that I ought to stand and uncover whenever I 
think about Chauvannes.” 

There was a sound in the darkness as of one 
drawing one’s body swiftly together in a chair. 
There was a sort of booming in the big voice. 

“You amaze me!” it said. “Of course, I 
knew what Chauvannes was after. He used to 
talk about it when we were shooting on the Vaal. 
He had the clue, he thought, to a lost civiliza¬ 
tion of an immense age, in the great wilderness 
of Central Africa, a little north of the Congo. 
The old route of the ivory raiders had touched it. 
And there were the stories the slavel traders 
had brought out, and so forth. I thought at 
the time that he was building on insufficient data, 
but one never knows what civilization may have 
flourished on any portion of the earth’s surface. 
An immense wilderness laid down over it would 

3 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

mean nothing. The race is much older than we 
imagine.” 

He continued to speak in his strong, firm 
voice: 

“I was not surprised that Chauvannes found 
some evidence of the thing he was looking for. 
He was a first-class archeologist. He knew all 
about everything of the sort that had been un¬ 
covered. And he was a good, all-around ex¬ 
plorer, none better. If there was any man in 
the world who could have gone from the Congo 
across the old trail of the ivory raiders, north¬ 
east to the Albert Nyanza, it was Chauvannes. 
I can believe that Chauvannes went in there, and 
that he found the evidences of the thing he was 
looking for; but the journal that the survivor 
of the expedition brought in could not be true. 
Chauvannes was insane when he wrote it—if the 
excerpts I saw of it were not colored. One could 
easily go mad at the end of an adventure like that. 
It was an appalling thing to undertake. That 
forest lies on the equator. It is very nearly three 
thousand miles across it. There is every conceiv¬ 
able peril in it. One would look for a man to 
come out on the Nyanza mad, if he ever did come 
out.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle replied in the same even 
voice. 

“Our government, Excellency,” he said, “was 

4 





The Great Cipher 

precisely of your opinion, when the journal finally 
came in. They thought Chauvannes was mad at 
the end. But he was not mad! He was sane and 
clever—how sane and how clever you will realize 
when you get the whole thing clearly in your mind. 
It was a long time before we understood it, 
although how we could have been so stupid seems 
to me now a greater wonder than the fantastic 
incidents with which Chauvannes filled the closing 
pages of his journal. 

“I think the first clue we got was the method 
Chauvannes had taken to be sure that the journal 
would get into Paris after his death. His direc¬ 
tion, written on the back of it, was that the bearer 
who brought it in should be paid five thousand 
francs by the executors of his estate. You see he 
was offering a reward for the thing to get in. 

“Only one of the three men that Chauvannes 
constantly speaks of in his journal ever appeared. 
One can imagine what happened to the other 
t wo —the same thing, doubtless, that happened 
to all the persons who started with Chauvannes 
northeast to the Nyanza after he had abandoned 
his excavations.” 

The big man beyond Monsieur Jonquelle in the 
dark seemed to have composed himself to listen. 
He was silent, and Monsieur Jonquelle went on: 

“These men, who were the only persons alive 
with Chauvannes when he finally reached the Ituri 

5 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


on the morning of the seventeenth of December, 
must have been three of the most desperate adven¬ 
turers in the world. They were evidently broken 
men at the end of their tether, willing to stake 
everything on a last chance, or they would not 
have joined Chauvannes. They were not men he 
selected. He never would have selected men of 
this character. They seem to have followed him 
in and to have literally annexed themselves to his 
expedition when he left the Congo east of the 
Leopold. They must have been an exquisite 
devil’s guard—those three; the little wolf-faced 
Apache, Leturc, the Finn sailor, and the American 
beach comber they called Captain Dix. 

“The Apache was the one who came in with the 
journal. He must have been, after all, what you 
would call the ‘best man’ of the three. Neverthe¬ 
less it was these three hell birds who came out 
alive with Chauvannes. And what he had to say 
about them is on every page of the journal. He 
must have changed his mind very shortly after 
they joined him, because the first impressions he 
wrote down, which were probably what our own 
would have been, were afterward scratched out. 
We might have believed that some one else had 
made these erasures but for the fact that the 
journal from this time on never fails to speak of 
these three men in the highest terms. Their tire¬ 
lessness, their energy, their courage, their devo- 

6 





4 


The Great Cipher 


tion to Chauvannes is the one note that continues 
through this journal to the end. 

“Of course, one could say that as these three 
men had to depend on Chauvannes to bring them 
out, the presence of a common peril would have 
united them in his support, and that while they 
were apparently exerting themselves for him, 
they were, in fact, laboring to get out of that 
wilderness alive. 

“They were evidently densely ignorant persons 
of a low order. The Finn and the American 
beach comber had no education whatever; Leturc 
could read—he was a deserter, we think, from 
the Foreign Legion—and he had a sort of devil’s 
shrewdness. But he was no match, when it came 
to wits, for Chauvannes. None of them were. 
They were ignorant and superstitious. But they 
were determined, desperate to the last degree, 
and afraid of nothing. 

“One of the features of the journal that first 
impressed me was the fact that Chauvannes had 
no illusions about these men. He understood 
each of them perfectly. He pinned the success 
of his great plan to an accurate conception of 
the Apache, Leturc. He thought this desperate 
human creature was what you would call the 
‘best man.’ He expected him to come out the best 
man, and he laid the plan he had in mind to fit that 

7 






Monsieur Jonquelle 

eventuality. And he was right. I saw that when 
I got to thinking about the journal. 

“And I saw something else. I saw that Chau- 
vannes realized his own situation pretty early in 
the march of events. He knew what he was going 
into. And he knew where the thing would lead. 
He realized it a long way ahead. This fact, as I 
have said, was one of the conspicuous features of 
the journal. I suppose one, in an incipient mad¬ 
ness, might realize all the accurate features of the 
situation that lay about Chauvannes, and before 
him, as he did; but I doubt it. I think only a man 
sound and sane could have seen it with the cer¬ 
tainty that Chauvannes saw it, and at the distance 
beyond the event. Only the soundest intelligence, 
in the calm control of every faculty, could have 
realized that the thing before him was inevitable. 
A man in any other state of mind would have 
undertaken to delude himself. He would have 
resorted to futile devices, or to some tragic issue 
before the end, or to some vain hope. It took a 
mind like Chauvannes’, profoundly sane, to see 
that the thing that awaited him was inevitable ! 

“I studied that journal as closely as a cipher 
dispatch. The evidences of Chauvannes’ mental 
condition did not appear until the entries begin¬ 
ning about the seventeenth of December—the day 
on which they finally came out of the forest on 
the old elephant trail. Of course, strange things 

8 





Tlie Great Cipher 

had happened before that—the decimation of the 
force, for one thing. But Chauvannes never 
seemed to attribute this to any but a natural cause, 
a sort of united plan of the dwarf camps to 
destroy the members of the expedition. 

“He found that whole, awful wilderness veined 
through with these camps, precisely as Stanley 
found it when he was following the Ituri in his 
effort to relieve Emin Pasha. And Chauvannes 
seems to have had precisely the same experiences 
as Stanley, in that the poisoned arrows, which the 
dwarf tribes used, were always fatal to the natives, 
but not to the white men of the expedition. At 
least, the three white men with Chauvannes, and 
the explorer himself, always escaped, while the 
persistent destruction of the other members of 
the expedition continued until only Chauvannes 
and the other white men came out alive. 

“Chauvannes, like other men who have been 
into the Congo, tried to find out what the poison 
was that these dwarfs used, but he had no more 
success at it than Stanley. He thought the fact 
that white men did not die of this poison, as Stan¬ 
ley’s expedition demonstrated, may have, perhaps, 
convinced these hostile tribes that a white man 
could not be so destroyed, and was the reason why 
they directed their attacks against the natives of 
the expedition and not against the four white men 
who conducted it. The explanation seems pos- 

9 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


sible. It seemed intelligent to Chauvannes, for he 
makes it very clear in his journal that this is his 
belief. He gives it as the reason why all the mem¬ 
bers of the expedition finally perished except the 
four members of it who were white. 

“The expedition was not large. It was as small 
as Chauvannes could get on with. He never in¬ 
tended it to be more than a scouting party, to lay 
out the thing he was looking for. The discovery 
of the emeralds was a sort of accident in remov¬ 
ing the portion of an ancient wall that an uprooted 
tree had dislodged.” 

There was a moment’s silence. Then Monsieur 
Jonquelle went on: 

“Of course, the average person, accustomed to 
adventure tales, has a fantastic notion about these 
hostile natives. But there is in fact nothing fan¬ 
tastic about them. The whole of this immense 
forest, lying above the equator, is inhabited by 
these tribes, and their furtive attacks with poi¬ 
soned weapons, usually at night, are well known 
to everybody. Stanley’s whole expedition was 
constantly menaced by them. You will see his 
map dotted all over with their camps. They are 
no fairy creatures of romance. They are a con¬ 
stantly menacing, actual peril in the Congo. 

“Chauvannes saw nothing strange or mysteri¬ 
ous about what happened to the native members 
of his expedition. His journal is clear on that. 

io 






The Great Cipher 

I said a while ago that the incredible things set 
out in the journal did not begin to appear until 
about the seventeenth of December, when they 
had finally come out. It is true that some indica¬ 
tory things are noted in the journal before that 
date. Chauvannes could not sleep. He returns 
again and again to this fact. Bromides did no 
good. He continues to complain about the failure 
of the bromides. He wonders if the drugs have 
lost their virtue, or if they could not have been 
pure. He notes that he tested this with one of the 
other men and observed the effect. The bromides 
were all right. This fact gave him a good deal of 
concern. He could not sleep. And the drugs 
upon which the medical profession depends in 
such a case, failed. 

“We find this feature in considerable detail and 
beginning some time before December 17 while 
the expedition was still in the forest of the Congo, 
in its awful march to the northeast. 

It could have been nothing short of awful in 
every conception of the word. The whole of that 
vast wdderness is a kingdom of Satan. We never 
can get any adequate realization of it—a horror 
of gloom and rain, the heavens shut out nearly all 
the time by the tree tops, the whole earth under¬ 
neath a bog, every form of creeper, of vermin, of 
reptile, the stench of a rotten world, and this 
invisible enemy that never relented and never tired 




Monsieur Jonquelle 

out. It was enough to break down the morale of 
anybody. No wonder Chauvannes couldn’t sleep ! 
But it never did break down his morale—that’s 
precisely what I am going to make clear to you 
not even when he saw, with an almost uncanny 
second sight, what was inevitably ahead of him. 

“I don’t know when it was that Chauvannes 
realized what was ahead of him, but as I have 
said, I think he saw it almost from the first day of 


the march north. 

“I studied that journal word by word and sen¬ 
tence by sentence. I felt at the time that no one 
of us understood it, that the thing meant some¬ 
thing which ought to appear if we were able to 
grasp a proper conception of it. I felt before it 
as I used to feel before those clever German dis¬ 
patches, which appeared on their faces to be 
merely a narrative of a domestic incident, when 
they were in fact army orders containing a definite 
direction. I was right, as events proved, but the 
government authorities in Paris at the time con¬ 
sidered my notion fantastic. 

“Still, as I have said, the strange digressions in 
his journal did not begin to appear until about 
the seventeenth of December, when they came out 
on to the great grass-covered plateau outlined to 
the east by a low mountain range, beneath which 
lay Lake Albert Nyanza. As it happened, they 
had come out ten days ahead of the date which 

12 




The Great Cipher 


they had determined upon for the arrival of the 
lake boat. It was to receive the expedition at 
the same point on the Nyanza that Stanley met 
Emin Pasha. 

‘Now, here was another indicatory point. 
They did not go ahead to the Nyanza as Stanley 
had done. They camped on a grassy slope;—it 
looked like an English lawn, Chauvannes said— 
within the first day’s march out of the forest. 
Here they remained. 

“Chauvannes had all the modern implements 
that an explorer carries with him, and he laid 
down the exact location of this camp with the most 
painstaking accuracy. It was charted in the jour¬ 
nal in half a dozen different forms and checked in 
every variety of way. He seemed to have spent 
a lot of time at this. He was determined that the 
exact spot of this camp should be definitely located 
for all time and beyond any possibility of error. 
And he did not fail. The exact location of that 
camp is as certain as any boundary monument on 
our Belgian frontier. It can be located to-day 
within the error of half a meter. He had plenty 
of time for this, because he remained in this camp 
with Leturc while the other men went on to the 
Nyanza. 

“The route to the lake could now be laid out to 
the eye. It was directly below a marked rocky 
promontory of the sky line. But the men with 

13 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


Chauvannes thought it better to be certain of the 
way out, and as they had to put in the time until 
the boat arrived, it seemed advisable to go over the 
route. The American beach comber, Dix, and the 
Finn set out for the Albert, Leturc remaining in 

the camp with Chauvannes. 

“Chauvannes seemed in the journal to take a 
certain care to justify this course. He was now 
alarmed about his condition. The camp was in a 
spot little less than heavenly after the awful for¬ 
est of the Congo. It was a rolling country of 
bright green pasture land, veined with an outline 
of trees, its hilltops studded with thickets beyond 
which lay to the east the range of mountains rim¬ 
ming the Nyanza. It was simply a paradise after 
the horror of the vast wilderness to the southwest 
of it. Birds were everywhere. It was a glorious 
country, full of antelope, eland, buffalo and the 
like. It was no trouble for a hunter to supply 
a camp. 

“It was here alone with Leturc that Chauvan¬ 
nes finished the journal, which I finally deciphered, 
as one might say, at the Service de la Surete in 
Paris. 

“I have said that the only thing indicating 
Chauvannes’ condition before the seventeenth of 
December, when they came out on the old elephant 
track into this heavenly country below the Albert, 
was the fact that he could not sleep and that the 

14 








The Great Cipher 


bromides had failed him. But this was not pre¬ 
cisely all. The journal began to indicate a state 
of mind in Chauvannes that he apparently hesi¬ 
tated a long time to record, the impression that 
they were approaching some sort of creature of 
which they had very little, if any, dependable 
information. 

“That statement seems vague, but the impres¬ 
sion upon which it is founded in the journal is in 
itself vague. It was, to put it plainly, a feeling 
that some strange creatures were ahead of him. 
Now, one could have understood this, if it had 
been the feeling that these creatures were follow¬ 
ing the expedition, for the hostile dwarfs had, in 
fact, followed it until they had destroyed, as I 
have said, every member of the expedition except 
the four white men. But it was not this peril that 
seemed to affect Chauvannes; this was a thing of 
which he was aware and which he could under¬ 
stand; but the vague fear of the creatures on in 
front of him was a new conception. 

“Chauvannes said that he could not dismiss this 
impression and that it increased as he advanced, 
attaining to a definite certainty of apprehension 
at about the time they came out into the grass land 
west of the Albert. 

“At first Chauvannes put this down as an illu¬ 
sion arising from the depression of insomnia. But 

15 







Monsieur Jonquelle 

he began to speak of it later as a sort of definite 

premonition to be reckoned with. 

“Of course, when the journal first came into our 
possession, we took this, and the incredible things 
that followed, to be merely the illusions of a man 
whose nervous system had broken down. This 
was a profound error. Every statement follow¬ 
ing in the journal was, as it proved, of the most 
definite importance. One got here at this point in 
the journal a pretty clear conception of the con¬ 
dition of Chauvannes at the time. 

“The three with him, whose care, devotion and 
untiring solicitude are, as I have said, the persist¬ 
ent note of this latter part of Chauvannes’ journal, 
were now very much concerned about him. They 
seemed to understand the danger, to himself, of 
one in such a mental state, for they secured 
and destroyed all the ammunition to the private 
weapons which Chauvannes carried; they even 
broke the blades of the knives. They appeared 
to realize that a homicidal seizure might develop 
from such a mental condition, and they seemed to 
fear that it might take the course of a suicidal 
mania. They were wholly without fear for them¬ 
selves, as Chauvannes’ journal repeats over and 
over again. 

“It is here, now, at this point, that the whole 
journal of Chauvannes’ begins to be taken up with 
the extraordinary things that he observed. The 

16 







The Great Cipher 


impression of some strange creatures close on the 
camp, in the neighborhood, became an obsession. 
One can tell that from the speculations with which 
the pages of the journal are filled at this point, 
as though the man were endeavoring to lay down 
an argument in order to support an impression 
which he felt certain was sound, but which he was 
also certain would appear fantastic to all other 
persons. Were men justified in the belief that the 
exceedingly narrow limits of their crude senses 
could give them a knowledge of all the creatures 
that might inhabit the world? He continues to 
reflect upon the limitation of the senses; the eye 
was easily deceived; the ear was wholly undepend¬ 
able; the sense of scent in a human being was 
absurd beside that of the most inferior animal, 
and all feeling was confined to a sense of touch 
infinitely crude. Was it not then ridiculous to 
assume, depending on such limited agencies, that 
one could have any large conception of what even 
the limited area of the world close about him 
contained? 

“There are a dozen pages of this speculation 
closely written in the journal, following the in¬ 
somnia and what we at first took to be the halluci¬ 
nation which possessed Chauvannes at the time. 
They bring us up to the strange events which he 
began now to set down in detail. 

“This was all mental. It was all what one 

17 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


would call { a state of the mind.’ The physical 
evidences began now to appear. 

“It was on the first night in the new camp after 
they had emerged from the forest that Chauvan- 
nes had a sensation, as he puts it, of something 
delicately feeling over his face. It seemed to be 
a very slight, moving touch, as of the tip of a 
feather, but it was clearly distinguishable. The 
man put up his hand and made a swift gesture in 
the darkness about him, but there was absolutely 
nothing that he could touch. He says that this 
thing happened more than once in the night, and 
each time, although he put out his hand instantly, 
it came in contact with no physical evidences of 
any creature about him. 

“This was before Dix and the Finn had set out 
to go over the route to the Albert. Chauvannes 
says that he spoke to the men ‘guardedly,’ as he 
puts it, about this experience on the day that fol¬ 
lowed it, but they had observed nothing. There 
had certainly been no sound in the tent; nor was 
there any track or evidence of the fact that any 
creature had been in it. 

“The thing occurred again the next night. On 
this occasion Chauvannes distinctly felt that swift, 
lingering touch pass over his face; and again, in¬ 
stantly, he clutched about him in the dark, beating 
the whole place with his arms in a desperate effort 
to come into some physical contact with the crea- 

18 











The Great Cipher 


ture. But it was wholly to no purpose. He 
touched nothing. There was no sound anywhere, 
and the men sleeping about him in the tent were 
not disturbed. He says that on the following 
morning he mentioned this thing again, but the 
three men with him had no experience of it what¬ 
ever. 

“If these creatures, of which Chauvannes had 
the strange premonitory sense, had finally ap¬ 
peared, they seemed to be directing their atten¬ 
tions exclusively to him. At any rate, the men 
denied having been disturbed by anything. They 
had seen nothing, felt nothing. But they were 
disturbed about Chauvannes. 

“And it was on this day, it seems, that they took 
the precaution about his weapons. They also de¬ 
cided that the Frenchman Leturc should remain 
with Chauvannes all the time to see that nothing 
happened to him. The journal makes it clear that 
this precaution was taken, with the idea that 
Chauvannes in his present mental condition might 
do some injury to himself, rather than in the 
notion that he was menaced by any mysterious 
creature. 

“And they followed that plan. Dix and the 
Finn set out to go to Albert Nyanza, and Leturc 
remained with Chauvannes. 

“It was on the third night, after the two men 
had departed and he was alone in the tent with 

19 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


the sleeping Leturc, that Chauvannes saw this 
creature. He says it was about three o’clock in 
the morning. He had been awake through the 
entire night, his eyes usually closed. He does not 
know how he happened to open them, but he did 
open them. It was precisely seventeen minutes 
to three, by the watch which he wore on his wrist. 
He knew this because it was a night of full moon, 
the brilliant rays of which entered the tent 
through the half-opened flap. There was abso¬ 
lutely no sound to have attracted Chauvannes’ 
attention, and no other physical evidence of the 
presence of the creature that he was at the time 
aware of. But at any rate, he opened his eyes 
practically at the moment when the creature 
entered the tent—a thing it did without disturbing 
the flap and without making any sound whatever. 

“Chauvannes says that he saw it distinctly. It 
paused for a moment after it had entered, remain¬ 
ing for some seconds quite motionless. He says 
that in proportion to the other parts of the crea¬ 
ture’s body, the head was enormous. It was 
cubical in contour. The outline was perfectly 
clear, but what we would call features were hardly 
distinguishable. The thing seemed to lack fea¬ 
tures. That was one of the distinguishing horrors 
of it—a head big in proportion to its body, cubical 
in outline and lacking features! The chest and 
the abdomen were also big, estimating the creature 

20 






The Great Cipher 


by its own proportions. The limbs were long, nar¬ 
row and jointed. The whole creature was of a 
repulsive, reddish color, and without any of the 
usual covering of animals with which the human 
race is familiar. The body seemed to be of some 
hard red substance, Chauvannes said—frozen 
and polished flesh, after the skin had been re¬ 
moved, was the idea he got. 

“The creature remained only a moment visible 
to him; then it disappeared. It seemed to Chau¬ 
vannes that it disappeared merely by turning 
about. He was unable to see it again, although 
the doorway where it entered was clear in the 
moonlight, and there was only the grass floor of 
the tent.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle stopped here in his narra¬ 
tive, like one who would wish a hearer to grasp 
the whole conception of the story before he went 
on. But he did not seek a comment. The man 
beyond him waited for him to go on, and he pres¬ 
ently continued: 

“I shall not follow the detail of all the expe¬ 
riences noted down by Chauvannes, and which, 
finally, brought him to the conclusions at which he 
at length arrived. He was able, after this night, 
to observe the creature and a number of its com¬ 
panions, although the man Leturc, who was al¬ 
ways with him, seems never to have observed it. 

21 




Monsieur Jonquelle 


Chauvannes got a profound impression of the 
creatures. They constantly gave him the idea of 
intelligence separated from any human feeling. 
He got also the impression that they were blind— 
at least in the sense that we understand blindness. 
That they had some other sense which was equal, 
if not superior, to the sense we call sight, was, he 
thought, clearly evident. 

“He was also able to discover, although he does 
not give all the details of that discovery in the 
journal, that these creatures lived underground, 
and that one of their underground cities was very 
close to the camp. He had, in fact, by some sinis¬ 
ter hazard, put down his camp almost at the door¬ 
way of the underground habitat of these extraor¬ 
dinary beings—if one could call a creature of this 
character a being in our sense. 

“I suppose it was these conceptions of the 
Thing that caused Chauvannes to note in his 
journal a parallel in our modern fiction—the story 
of the Englishman Wells, about an underground 
creature, a degenerate of the human race, living 
in the darkness of a subterranean world and sup¬ 
porting itself on the flesh of the surface remnant 
of that race grown lovely and effeminate! 

“Chauvannes in his journal did not draw a 
parallel. But he noted the details of this story, 
which he had read, as of something that occurred 
to him after he had actually discovered the crea- 

22 





The Great Cipher 


tures, of which he had come out of the forest of 
the Congo with that dominating premonition. 

“Now, these are among the distinguishing inci¬ 
dents of Chauvannes’ journal that led Your Excel¬ 
lency, and the Paris authorities, to believe that 
Chauvannes was mad. The culmination of events 
seemed to establish it. 

“You know how the journal goes on, giving the 
minute details that Chauvannes observed during 
the week that he was alone with Leturc, while the 
American beach comber, Dix, and the Finn made 
their journey to the Nyanza. And you know how 
Chauvannes finally came to the conclusion that the 
seven great emeralds, which he carried sewed up 
in the lining of his waistcoat, were the things that 
set these creatures on him. 

“The emeralds are in the Louvre. They are 
seven of the most extraordinary jewels in the 
world. They are larger and purer than any other 
known emerald. They are cut in a manner of 
which we have no knowledge, and the backs of 
them are covered with a hieroglyphic writing that 
antedates any language that we know, and which, 
so far, has baffled every effort to translate. 

“At any rate, although the Frenchman Leturc 
was with Chauvannes all the time—was, in fact, 
guarding him all the time—and although he was 
never at any time more than a dozen meters from 
the door of the tent, and although no sound was 

23 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


ever heard, no violence was ever offered to any¬ 
thing, no track was ever seen, no act was ever done 
of which Chauvannes had any knowledge, or the 
guard Leturc had any knowledge—in spite of all 
this, on the very day before the return of Dix and 
the Finn, the emeralds disappeared! 

“Chauvannes wrote it down in detail in the 
journal. 

“He was certain, accurate, without any trace of 
doubt; the emeralds—no longer in his possession 
—were in the underground habitat of these crea¬ 
tures! And the opening to this habitat was close 
beside the very place of the camp. 

“It was hardly any wonder that the men with 
him considered him mad, especially when one 
reads the closing pages of the journal. He takes, 
in writing, an elaborate and tender farewell of 
the three men. He thanks them in detail for their 
courage, their unfailing kindness to him and their 
devotion to the expedition. No man could have 
written a higher testimonial of the fidelity of his 
companions. He points out that his death is im¬ 
pending and certain. He begs that the journal 
may be carried to France, and he urges the French 
government to send out an expedition to recover 
the emeralds, which, he says, are concealed in the 
first underground dwelling of the creatures, which 
he has described, as though he were aware of the 
fact that there were other dwellings of these crea- 

24 






The Great Cipher 


tures about. The emeralds are In the one closest 
to the camp, and they can be recovered! He is 
insistent on this point, as he is insistent on the 
fact that his death is near and inevitable, and as 
he is insistent on the fidelity of the three men 
with him. 

“And when on the following day, as Leturc 
reported, he seized the Finn’s rifle and shot him¬ 
self, the men were, of course, convinced that he 
was mad.” 

There came a sudden vigor into Monsieur Jon- 
quelle’s voice. 

“But he was not mad! Don’t you see, Excel¬ 
lency, that the whole narrative of the journal was 
an immense cipher? Don’t you see what the man 
was doing?” 

The voice beyond Monsieur Jonquelle, in the 
darkness of the portico, boomed in a sudden big 
expletive. There was the sound of a doubled fist 
crashed into the palm of a hand. 

“Wonderful!” he cried. “It’s clever beyond 
words. Good God! Think of the man in that 
deadly position working out a clever thing like 
that. He knew what was going to happen to 
him. He knew it as soon as he picked up those 
jewels under the overturned stones on the Congo. 
He knew he would never come out alive, and he 
worked out the cipher in this journal to show 
where the emeralds were concealed, so the French 

25 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


authorities could recover them. And he worked 
out all the details to be sure that the journal would 
finally get into Paris. It’s wonderful! It’s amaz¬ 
ing-” 

He beat his leg with his big hand, thumping it 
as one might thump grist in a bag. 

“I never dreamed that that was what the man 
was after. I thought he was mad!” 

“Surely,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle. “It was 
the first impression of everybody. But he was 
not mad. He was merely making a great cipher 
with all the details of this journal—a cipher that 
would deceive the three men who had already 
killed off all the natives in his expedition, and who 
had determined to murder him after they were 
certain that they could reach the Albert Nyanza! 
A cipher that would so completely deceive them, 
by bearing on its face the proof of their innocence 
and of his own madness, that they would be care¬ 
ful to get it to the French authorities as a justi¬ 
fication of themselves! 

“He knew there was no chance that he would 
ever come out alive! But he wished to rob these 
assassins of the treasure which they coveted, and 
he wished the record of his expedition and these 
incomparable emeralds to reach France. He 
therefore prepared a journal in which was con¬ 
cealed, as in a code, all the actual facts connected 
with his expedition and his assassination, and at 

2 6 






The Great Ciph er 


the same time would disclose the place in which 
the emeralds were concealed. It would also bring 
the assassins to that justice which they deserved. 
He foresaw that Dix and the Finn would assume 
that Leturc had stolen the emeralds. He knew 
that the Apache Frenchman was shrewder than 
these two, that he would realize their suspicion 
and that he would forestall it by their murder— 
a thing we know immediately happened after the 
assassination of Chauvannes on the morning of 
their return. This was established by the frag¬ 
mentary confession of the Apache Leturc, shortly 
before he was executed.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle stopped. 

“I maintain, Excellency, that this whole journal 
is the finest example of code writing that was ever 
undertaken in the world.” 

He paused. And his voice took on a note of 
profound courtesy. 

“You know, Excellency, what the creature was 
that Chauvannes described, and where the emer¬ 
alds were hidden?” 

Again the big voice boomed. 

“Surely,” it cried. “Our conception of a thing 
depends on the manner in which it is described and 
the mental state which has been prepared to re¬ 
ceive that description. It was the ant! The red 
ant! And the emeralds were concealed in the ant- 
heap nearest to the point where the camp was 
located I” 









II .—Found in the Fog 

London had been in fog for a week—that 
thick, yellow, sulphurous fog that seems to seep 
out of the earth, that turns the city into a cavern, 
packed with the smoke of an inferno and filled 
with weird sounds. It had lifted a little on Friday 
evening when Monsieur Jonquelle came out of the 
Empire Service Club. 

“Diable!” he commented as he waited for his 
motor t6 draw up; “these Britons have lungs of 
brass.” 

He had come this day from Paris and dined 
with Sir James Macbain, the head of the English 
department of police. London had been startled 
by a mystery, a mystery that had emerged from 
this fog. 

On Wednesday night a four-wheeler had taken 
a fare at Charing Cross upon the arrival of the 
train from Dover. The fog was thick and the 
driver did not notice that a second man entered 
his cab. The only one he remembered was a 
short, stout man of middle age who named a 
hotel in Gloucester Road. When the four-wheeler 
arrived before the door of the hotel two men were 

28 


Found in the Fog 


found in it. The short, stout one was dead and 
the other unconscious. The dead man proved to 
be Lord Landeau and the other the Count de 
Choiseul. Both had been shot in precisely the 
same direction from right to left. But while the 
bullet that killed Lord Landeau had passed en¬ 
tirely through his body, that which entered the 
Count de Choiseul had been deflected by striking 
a rib and had caused only a flesh wound that bled 
profusely. A revolver with two chambers empty 
was lying on the floor of the cab. The driver ex¬ 
plained that as he passed Hyde Park he heard two 
reports in quick succession, but he took them to be 
the explosive sounds of a motor vehicle close 
behind him. Upon regaining consciousness the 
Count de Choiseul had declined to make any state¬ 
ment whatever. 

The motor crossed Piccadilly and entered Bond 
Street. Monsieur Jonquelle, traveling whither 
he could not see, thought of the tragedy and of 
what Sir James had said: 

“The man’s guilty, guilty as the devil, but we 
have failed to trace the weapon, and if he con¬ 
tinues to keep his mouth closed we cannot convict 
him. When we have put our case in, some nimble 
little barrister will pop up, hint that the prisoner 
is silent to shield a woman, offer some cock-and- 
bull story to fit the facts, and out he goes free as 
any of us. Damn the law! That’s what I say. 

29 



Monsieur Jonquelle 


In your country a prisoner can be taken before a 
magistrate and interrogated, but here he can sit 
tight and the crown cannot even comment on the 
fact of his silence.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle smiled as he recalled this 
didactic explosion of the angry baronet; he was 
familiar with the English law. The taxi turned 
off sharp into a narrow street running toward 
Park Lane, and presently drew up before a door. 
It was one of those gloomy, respectable houses 
that seem to have dwelt forever in these gloomy, 
respectable squares between New Bond Street 
and the border of Hyde Park. There was a 
policeman on this street, but not precisely before 
the door. He strolled up when the motor stopped, 
but after a glance at the man who got out and a 
word to the driver he passed on. 

A servant admitted Monsieur Jonquelle and 
conducted him to a room on the second floor. 
There, a man sat reading by a library table. The 
man was not an Englishman, nor was one able pre¬ 
cisely to say of what race he was. One placed him 
indefinitely in the south of Europe. He had an 
impressive face, but in it there was something 
subtly wrong. One thought it was the slack lip, 
or the small, deep-seated eye, or the heavy jaw, 
but no one of these features seemed to account for 
the strength of the impression. He was about 
forty, strong and athletic, one of a dozen figures 

30 







Found in the Fog 


to be seen on any morning on the golf course at 
Cannes or on the links above La Turbie. He 
seemed a sort of invalid in some sense, for there 
was a pillow within the arm of the chair on the 
left side. He looked up sharply when Monsieur 
Jonquelle entered. The Frenchman did not 
speak until the door was closed behind him; then 
he bowed with a formal courtesy. 

“My dear Count,” he said, “permit me to con¬ 
gratulate you.” 

“I thank you, Monsieur,” replied the man, “the 
wound proves fortunately slight, although the loss 
of blood was considerable.” 

“Pardon,” continued the Frenchman with a 
faint, whimsical smile, “I do not felicitate Mon¬ 
sieur le Comte upon his health, but upon his cour¬ 
age.” 

“Courage!” echoed the man. “What courage 
have I shown in this affair?” 

“Monsieur le Comte continues to mistake the 
object of my remark,” said the Prefect of Police 
as he advanced into the room, put his hat and stick 
on a console and sat down, drawing off his gloves. 

“It was not in the affair in which the Count de 
Choiseul received his wound that he has shown 
this daring that moves me to a compliment, but 
after that, when he came to this house.” 

The man’s face darkened. 

“And why should I not come here?” he re- 

31 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


turned. “It is now the property of Lady Lan- 
deau. She wired from the Continent directing 
that I should be removed to this house and prop¬ 
erly attended, when she heard of my injury. It 
was a delicate courtesy, seeing that Lady Landeau 
is herself prostrated at Bad Nauheim.” 

“Magnifique!” exclaimed Monsieur Jonquelle. 
“Bad Nauheim! It is where one goes for the 
heart. And such a sensitive, such a delicate and 
impressionable heart is this heart of my lady.” 

He made a slight gesture. 

“Who should know this better than the Count 
de Choiseul? Ah, Monsieur, do not traverse the 
soft impeachment. It is the gossip of fashionable 
Europe. One hears it on every hand, at Biarritz, 
at Trouville, at Ostend—of course, Monsieur, in 
the whisper only and under the rose, but one hears 
it for all that, this infatuation of Lady Landeau 
for the Count de Choiseul. . . . Bad Nauheim, 
truly! Eh, hien! Many waters will not quench 
it, neither those of Haute-Savoie nor of any Ger¬ 
man spring.” 

“Monsieur,” said the man coldly, “you go very 
far.” 

“But a less distance than the truth,” replied the 
Frenchman. His manner was careless, debonair. 

“Ah, my dear Count, you would elude me in 
the reserves of a becoming modesty, in the humili¬ 
ties of a noble nature. But I pursue you with 

32 





Found in the Fog 

felicitations upon your conquest. Perhaps, 
though, Monsieur does not look upon this affair 
with so high a value. The Count de Choiseul is 
a great hunter. The conquest of a romantic 
woman, without any knowledge of the world and 
married to a man of twice her age, may not appear 
to Monsieur to be a triumph of the first order.” 

The wounded man was pale with anger. But 
Monsieur Jonquelle went on with a light uncon¬ 
cern. 

“The fact that Lord Landeau looked upon the 
Count de Choiseul as a gentleman, and permitted 
him the liberties of his friendship and the confi¬ 
dences of a man of honor doubtless, too, robbed 
the affair of a certain sporting element which 
Monsieur le Comte would have in his adventures.” 

“Is there then no end to the insults that one 
must receive?” cried the wounded man, white to 
the lips. “Is it not enough to lay one under espi¬ 
onage like a common felon, to set a creature of the 
police about one in every servant’s coat; but also 
the Prefect of Paris must be brought over to 
lecture one on morals!” 

“Ah,” replied the Frenchman with an injured 
air, “the Count de Choiseul does not regard me 
as his friend! Is gratitude then a mere fancy of 
the poets? And it is I who have three times 
warned him from the pit—Monsieur will remem' 
her those three times. In Nice when the Count 

33 





.tkJCBUttrftthUUL. t JVJ/V ( T.' 

Monsieur Jonquelle 


was about to dispose of some antiques from the 
collection of—let us say—an adopted uncle. In 
Paris when the Count was arranging to insure 
beyond doubt the success of a favorite horse at 
Auteuil. True the Count had before him a prece¬ 
dent for this in holy legend. Did not Saint Hila- 
rius, according to Saint Jerome, draw upon the 
instrumentalities of Heaven in order to beat the 
horses of the Duumvir of Gaza? But times have 
changed. The saints are not popular in France, 
and the agencies that Monsieur was about to use 
for his adventure were, I take it, unknown to 
the Father of the church.” 

He paused and lifted his finger. 

“And a third time in a villa in Baden, when the 
Count de Choiseul was banking a gentleman’s 
game at roulette. True again, the Count could 
have urged a very pretty defense upon the point 
that the German law contemplated games of 
chance only, and that this roulette was a game 
from which Monsieur le Comte had very deftly 
removed every element of chance. But Monsieur 
instead of depending on that nice distinction— 
wisely, I shall always believe—preferred to act 
upon my friendly suggestion. 

“Moreover”—and the Prefect of Police made 
a gracious gesture—“do I not always, in address¬ 
ing Monsieur le Comte, accord to him the honors 
and distinctions of his title, a courtesy that the 

34 






Found in the Fog 


editors of the Almanack de Gotha have denied 
him?” 

The face of the Count de Choiseul became sul¬ 
len and ugly. The glaze of culture seemed to slip 
off. 

“What are you after, Monsieur?” he said 
through stiff jaws. 

“Ma foil” replied the Prefect; “does Monsieur 
le Comte ask me after this reminiscence? For 
what reason should I come here from Paris but 
out of my abiding interest in Monsieur’s career? 
After my congratulations upon the approach of 
the ambitions of a life I would venture upon a 
fourth suggestion to the Count de Choiseul.” 

He leaned forward and addressed the wounded 
man as though he were some envied darling of the 
gods. 

“If this affair should, as the Americans say it, 
blow over, then the Count de Choiseul has won a 
way into the very lap of fortune. He will be able 
to wed a lady of noble birth and to enjoy all that 
this lady takes by will from Lord Landeau—this 
city house which Monsieur has so early occupied 
with so fine a courage; a deer forest in Argyle- 
shire; a yacht in the Mersey; a villa at Cannes, 
an apartment upon the Champs-Elysees, and the 
greatest landed estate in the English county of 
Dorset.” 


35 






Monsieur Jonquelle 

Monsieur Jonquelle paused and elevated his 
eyebrows. 

“I do not promise that the conservative Briton 
will permit the Count de Choiseul to occupy, with 
these benefits, the vacant seat of Lord Landeau 
in their House of Lords, but Monsieur should not 
set that loss at too high a value. We are told by 
the greatest English journalist now living that this 
noble body is composed of garrulous old gentle¬ 
men always obviously quite wrong.” 

The Frenchman went on, returning to his seri¬ 
ous note. 

“These are substantial benefits. If the Count 
de Choiseul can win to them he has substituted the 
reality for every fiction that he has so long pre¬ 
tended. Ten suis bien aise! But in order to win 
them a certain thing remains to be accomplished. 
A very great deal has been done. By what agen¬ 
cies? Diable, such queries run into the riddle of 
the universe! Nevertheless a final thing remains. 
And unless this thing is accomplished, Monsieur 
le Comte cannot enter his kingdom.” 

The Prefect spoke like one dealing firmly with 
the realities of life. 

“Tiens! What would you have? Shall the 
Count de Choiseul hesitate then in the moment of 
victory? If chance has helped him mount up to 
the last step, shall he not take that step himself? 

36 





Found in the Fog 


Or if design has carried him thus far, shall he not 
courageously go on?” 

“Monsieur,” said the Count de Choiseul, “we 
shall get on better if you permit me to understand 
you.” 

He sat back in his chair, the pillow under his 
arm, his eyes narrowed and his big jaw protruding 
like a plowshare. 

“The Count de Choiseul shall precisely under¬ 
stand me,” replied the Prefect. “The suggestion 
that I come all the way from Paris to make to him 
is this—Monsieur must give some explanation of 
this tragic affair. 

“Attend, Monsieur, if you please, and I will 
show you how pressing this necessity is. As this 
matter now stands it is a mystery—that is to say, 
a riddle, a problem. Now in France and among 
all Latin peoples a mystery, a riddle, a problem is 
forgotten like any other event if the answer is not 
found within the proverbial seven days of public 
notice. But to all Saxon races, to the Germans 
and to the English, a mystery is an eternal 
challenge. If a thing have an explanation 
it is immediately forgotten, but if it cannot be ex¬ 
plained it will abide forever. Moreover the Saxon 
mind will never cease to consider it and will never 
give it up.” 

He made a gesture with his hand, the fingers 
extended. 


37 






Monsieur Jonquelle 

“Look, Monsieur, how the Germans and these 
English labor eternally to solve mysteries that 
every Latin knows are beyond the capacities of 
the human mind—the origin of life, the domicile 
of consciousness and the meaning of the universe. 
Do the Germans or the English ever abandon 
them? Read Haeckel, Monsieur, and Spencer, 
Monsieur. The English purchase a hundred 
thousand copies of the ponderous explanation of 
the professor at Jena, and sit down with that to 
solve the great riddle for themselves. And with 
every new year comes a new German or a new 
Englishman, to show that the answers of his 
predecessors are wrong and that he alone has the 
correct ones. Nevertheless though every explana¬ 
tion is shown to be false the mystery is never aban¬ 
doned. Nor is any mystery ever abandoned by 
these English people.” 

The face of the wounded man was inscrutable 
and the Prefect went on: 

“Every man in these islands is fundamentally a 
solver of mysteries. Observe the puzzles on 
sale, and the devices of journals to increase their 
circulation by exhibiting a jar full of beans to be 
guessed at, or by hiding a hundred guineas on the 
Epsom Downs. And so, on account of this racial 
characteristic, the London police at once give 
some explanation of every mysterious crime. If 
they did not every man in this kingdom would 

38 





Found in the Fog 


light his pipe and sit down to solve it for them, 
and he would never cease to work on it until an 
explanation was given to him. Literally, Mon¬ 
sieur, I do not exaggerate—for the peace of mind 
of the empire the police of these islands must find 
a solution for every mystery.” 

The Count de Choiseul, his attitude still that of 
a guarded defense, was nevertheless listening with 
attention. The Prefect went on. 

“For this reason,” he continued, “the London 
police, when profoundly puzzled, are often very 
glad to compromise with a mystery—that is to 
say, to accept any reasonable explanation of it. 

“Now, Monsieur le Comte,” and he spoke 
lower, “this affair is a mystery that the police can¬ 
not solve, and therefore all England will presently 
undertake to solve it.” He spoke still lower. “I 
come then to suggest that if the Count de Choiseul 
will offer a reasonable explanation of this affair 
the police will accept it. All the London police 
want is an explanation not clearly inconsistent with 
the few evidential facts. And if Monsieur can 
offer such an explanation I undertake to promise 
that the police shall accept it.” 

The Prefect put up his hand as though to pre¬ 
vent an interruption. 

“Pardon, Monsieur, a further word. The 
Count de Choiseul must not fail to get my mean¬ 
ing. The one thing which the London police re- 

39 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


quire is some explanation of this mystery that 
does not leave them ridiculous. The true expla¬ 
nation? I do not care. The probable explana¬ 
tion? I do not care. But a rational explanation? 
,Yes, it must be that.” 

Again he prevented an interruption with a ges¬ 
ture. 

“Think about it very carefully, Monsieur, if 
you please. I have just now with a sort of indirec¬ 
tion laid before the Count de Choiseul the conclu¬ 
sions possible to be deduced from certain events 
in his life. He may have believed my words vitri¬ 
olic. But, Monsieur, I have been gentle compared 
to the brutal directness with which this English 
nation will comment upon these events when it 
sets itself about the solving of this mystery. And 
if the Count de Choiseul has in fact any plans for 
the future they will become impossible. 

“Believe me, Monsieur, my flippant and sug¬ 
gestive manner in the earlier moments of this 
interview were with the design of showing how 
the Count de Choiseul’s life and conduct in this 
affair could be construed—if they were known. 
And let us not deceive ourselves—they cannot be 
concealed if this affair goes on. 

“No, Monsieur, hear me a little further before 
you undertake to reply. There is in every mystery 
a psychological moment when an adequate expla¬ 
nation will wipe it out of public notice. But the 

40 





Found in the Fog 


moment cannot be prolonged. It even now strikes 
in this affair. Observe, Monsieur. On Wednes¬ 
day evening the wounded de Choiseul was re¬ 
moved at first to a hospital and then to this house. 
The police appeased the public by giving out that 
the Count would doubtless explain the tragedy 
just as soon as he was able to make a statement. 

‘Now if Monsieur issues such a statement the 
police will accept it, the public will be satisfied 

and the mystery will be cleared up. If he does 
not-” 

Monsieur Jonquelle shrugged his shoulders and 
spread out his hands with a suggestive gesture. 
Then he drew a little closer to the wounded man 
and continued in a voice so low that it was almost 
a whisper: 

“Moreover so anxious are the London police 
to be rid of this mystery that they will accept the 
Count de Choiseul’s explanation and abandon the 
one they believe to be true, and that is—pardon, 
Monsieur, if I appear gauche —that Lord Lan- 
deau was deliberately assassinated by the Count 
de Choiseul. But they believe that an unforeseen 
event interfered with the Count de Choiseul’s plan 
and imposed upon him this ordeal of silence— 
namely, that as the Count de Choiseul was about 
to send a second bullet into his victim, Lord Lan- 
deau, either by striking the pistol with his arm in 
the convulsion of death or by making a momen- 

4i 







Monsieur Jonquelle 


tary attempt before death to grasp it, turned the 
second shot into the Count’s own body precisely in 
the direction that the ball in fact took, by which 
the Count de Choiseul received a wound that ren¬ 
dered him unconscious.” 

He paused and looked the wounded man ear¬ 
nestly in the face. 

“Surely, the Count de Choiseul can offer some 
explanation to take the place of this one?” 

The man had been listening, his jaws com¬ 
pressed, his eyes narrowed. He now passed his 
fingers over the lower part of his face with a sort 
of irresolution. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “who is to decide whether 
this explanation which you seek is convincing and 
fits what you call ‘the evidential facts’ ?” 

“Why, Monsieur le Comte,” replied the Pre¬ 
fect, “we shall decide that ourselves, you and I, 
here between us.” 

The wounded man sat back in his chair. He 
put out his hand on the table beside him, and the 
extended fingers moved on the board as to a sort 
of tune. 

“Well,” he said, “what is wrong with the 
theory that the two men in the cab were fired 
upon by a third?” 

“Alas, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect, “such 
an explanation is merely to complicate the mys¬ 
tery. It is but to add to the mystery wc have, a 

42 







Found in the Fog 


mysterious assassin, a mysterious motive, a mys¬ 
terious disappearance, and a further mysterious 
reason why some unknown person wished to mur¬ 
der both Lord Landeau and the Count de Choi- 
seul. Such an explanation would not help the 
authorities. It would only set the whole English 
public hot-foot to work on the thing. Besides, 
Monsieur, there is the fact of the pistol found 
on the cab floor. How came it there? No mur¬ 
derer would deliberately leave behind him a 
weapon by which he might possibly be traced. 
And, too, Monsieur, in the event that this pistol 
should prove the property of Lord Landeau or 
of the Count de Choiseul, what then?” 

The wounded man reflected. “Is it not possi¬ 
ble,” he said, “that Lord Landeau fired these 
shots?” 

“Let us look at that theory a moment,” replied 
Monsieur Jonquelle. “Jealousy would be a suffi¬ 
cient motive. But what of these evidential facts? 
The Count de Choiseul sat on the right, Lord 
Landeau on the left; the Count is broad-shoul¬ 
dered, the Englishman stout and short-armed. 
The direction of the ball that killed Lord Lan¬ 
deau makes it clear that the two men were sitting 
side by side when the shot was fired. Now to 
inflict this wound Lord Landeau must have 
reached entirely round the Count de Choiseul with 
his right arm, a thing impossible. 

43 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

“Think, Monsieur!” And the Prefect looked 
at the Count de Choiseul with the greatest con¬ 
cern. “A final explanation must remain, exclusive 
of these, and exclusive of a design on the part of 
the Count de Choiseul deliberately to assassinate 
Lord Landeau. Mon Dieu! Monsieur is a man 
of resources! It cannot fail to occur to him!” 

The anxiety in the voice of the Prefect of Police 
could not be doubted. The Count de Choiseul 
suddenly threw up his head. 

“Well!” he cried, “suppose this to be the true 
explanation then: A man of honor is in love with 
a married woman. In a cab in the night in the 
fog, like a gentleman he tells the husband of this 
woman and implores him to give her up. The 
husband refuses, and in despair the man under¬ 
takes to send a bullet into his own heart. The 
bullet is deflected by a rib, the man’s arm is caught 
by his companion, and the second shot intended 
for himself kills the husband of the woman. What 
then? Does such an explanation fit your eviden¬ 
tial facts?” 

“Ah!” cried Monsieur Jonquelle, springing to 
his feet. “Tres bien! ,) He remained a moment, 
his eyes bright and his face tense with reflection. 

“It does fit them—it fits them like a key in a 
lock. Men have killed themselves for love since 
the world began. The motive is convincing, and 
the explanation tallies with every physical fact: 

44 





Found in the Fog 


the position of the two persons, the direction of 
the wounds—even the very pistol on the cab floor. 
Nor does this explanation bar the Count de Choi- 
seul from the regard of Madame. It is one thing 
to kill a woman’s husband in cold blood, and quite 
another to kill him by inadvertence in an attempt 
to take one’s own life for love of the woman. The 
latter becomes a sort of terrible compliment 
presently to be forgiven for its motive. My con¬ 
gratulations, Monsieur le Comte!” 

He touched a bell. When the servant appeared 
the Prefect inquired if Sir James Macbain had 
arrived at the house. And being told that the 
baronet was below, directed that he be shown up 
immediately. 

When the head of the department of London 
police entered Monsieur Jonquelle rapidly ex¬ 
plained the situation. The baronet started and 
snapped his big iron fingers, then he listened with 
the closest attention. He did not speak until the 
Prefect was quite done with his recital. Then he 
turned to the Count de Choiseul. He was a huge 
man with an abrupt, decided manner. 

“I do not believe this story,” he said; “I think 
it is wholly false. Nevertheless I will accept it 
as the true explanation of Lord Landeau’s death 
if the Count de Choiseul will commit it to writing 
over his signature. I may add that for the exam¬ 
ining magistrate also to accept it the Count must 

45 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


include that he makes this statement at his own 
volition.” 

Writing materials were brought and the 
wounded man wrote out his explanation of the 
tragedy. His face had changed. It was like the 
face of one who from subterranean perils has 
gained the upper air. When his statement was 
signed and witnessed the baronet put the folded 
paper into his pocket and the Prefect took up his 
hat and stick. 

“Adieu, Monsieur le Comte,” he said. “I shall 
perhaps not see you again.” 

“I will look you up in Paris !” replied the Count 
de Choiseul with a pleasant smile. 

Monsieur Jonquelle paused a moment with his 
hand on the door. 

“I fear not,” he said. “It is the law of Eng- 
land, Monsieur may be interested to know, that if 
in an attempt to take his own life one by accident 
kills another, he is guilty of murder.” 





Ill — The Alien Corn 


i 

I PARTED from Monsieur Jonquelle at Mar¬ 
seilles. I might have gone on with him to Algeria, 
but I was only an aide-de-camp attached to the 
staff of the commanding general in this affair. It 
was the Paris branch of our house that had the 
thing in hand. But I was idling in that city of 
pleasant sin and they sent me with him. It was 
an honorable discharge I got at Marseilles, not a 
desertion. 

“Run up to Nice,” the Prefect had said, “and 
amuse yourself, Monsieur. There is sun in Nice 
and the whole world to play with. Diable! If 
only one could be always young! . . . What is it 
that Chateaubriand says? ‘If man, physically 
made perfect, could unceasingly respond to a 
sentiment everlastingly renewed, he might very 

well live the life of the gods V 

And he made a delicate gesture with his ex¬ 
tended fingers. 

“If there be a trim ankle in the whole of France 

47 


Monsieur Jonquelle 

you will find it now upon the Promenade des 
Anglais.” 

The head of the Department of Police in Paris 
is a gentleman. If you doubt it go into the 
Theatre Vaudeville and see La Prise de Berg-op - 
Zoom. 

“The head of the Department of Police in Lon¬ 
don is a baronet; you will remember that from the 
recent attempt of an assassin to shoot him down 
in the street before his house. 

‘‘You will therefore set aside, if you please, the 
type of persons observed to march at the head 
of parades in your strangely governed cities, and 
get, instead of that, a picture of a suave, gray 
man, who might be a minister of war in a book of 
memoirs.” 

He gave me a further word at parting. 

“You must live on the hills back of Nice,” he 
said; “the low quarters of the town are not 
healthy. Find a good hotel on the Boulevard des 
Cimiez.” 

“And how shall I find it?” I said. 

He laughed. 

“Why, Monsieur, there is nothing easier in this 
world. The tram ascends from the Avenue de la 
Gare to Cimiez. Enter it premier if you like; 
but look through into the second-class compart¬ 
ment. You will see some dozen ladies of noble 

48 





The Alien Corn 


birth there.” He paused a moment. “Observe 
where those ladies descend and follow them.” 

He laughed again; then he added: 

“Try the Imperial Palais; old Monsieur Bou- 
larde, from the Champs-Elysees, is proprietor. 
You will find chaufage central and a cafe to be 
decorated. Boularde’s method when he employs 
a chef is that of a master, Monsieur. He goes in 
and orders a dinner from the card; when he has 
tasted it he summons its creator. ‘Monsieur,’ he 
will say then, ‘you are a good chef—you are an 
excellent chef; but you are not the best to be had 
in France. I cannot employ you.’ ” 

Then his shrewd face became serious. 

“Remember, Monsieur, they are all children 
over there in Nice and this is the season of carni¬ 
val. You will be bombarded with confetti, and 
driven by your coattails for a petit cheval, and 
hung with garlands. . . . Laugh, Monsieur! 
Never cease to laugh! Spend your money! Waste 
your time and forget this unpleasant business that 
we are on. I shall attend to that. There is a trap 
laid that they will eventually fall into—if not to¬ 
day, then to-morrow.” His face changed swiftly, 
like a mirror in moving lights. “But do you give 
it no further thought until I come upon you on 
some sunny morning. It will be all too soon 
believe me—if you have got well into that en¬ 
chanting frolic.” 


49 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


He reached up and laid his hand upon my shoul¬ 
der. 

“But you will not be a fool, my friend.” And 
he looked at me with his keen gray eyes. “Eat 
the honey of your golden youth; but mind the 
bees, Monsieur! Kiss the petite masque that 
whispers ‘’Elio, dearie!’ into your Saxon ear; 
but do not let your heart out of the bag. And do 
not believe all the words that we speak in France. 
Mon Dieu! Have we not a w r ay of saying fille de 
joie when we mean the pit?” 

And he turned back at the gangplank of his 
boat for a final word: 

“Keep out of the chill at sunset, mon cher ami t 
and the game at Monte Carlo.” 

If there is any sun in one’s blood it will come 
out in France: the people are so genial. I trav¬ 
eled up to Nice on the express. An old French¬ 
man got into my compartment. He was big and 
stooped, and he had a wilderness of beard; but 
he was a suave and pleasant person. He read 
La Patrie through his big, dim spectacles, with 
his nose against the page; but when we were on 
the way, and he had got the news of Paris, he put 
it down, addressed me with a little courteous apol¬ 
ogy for the monotony and asperities of travel— 
and we fell into a pleasant talk. 

He had a distressing weakness of the chest that 
ejected him out of Paris in the winter months, and 

50 






The Alien Corn 


he was on his way to Mentone. He had the his¬ 
tory of the Cote-d’Azur upon his fingertips, and 
he passed from the first days of the world into the 
last with a charming ease of manner. He pointed 
out the Roman monuments and the English golf 
course at Cannes. He spoke of Caesar and Lord 
Brougham in the same sentence, and the island 
where Paganini lay for so long unburied, listening 
to the great orchestra of the Mediterranean and 
the winds. 

He envied me the holiday in Nice. To be an 
American, young, rich and traveling for his pleas¬ 
ure, was to have God’s blessings bound together 
in a bundle. Had I a hostelry in Nice arranged 
for? The city would be crowded, now that the 
rains were ended. I told him I would go to the 
Imperial Palais on the Boulevard des Cimiez. 
Ah, I was very rich, then! And he coughed to lay 
clear the great contrast in our fortunes. He 
seemed depressed after that; and when I got out 
at Nice I left him huddled over in a corner of the 
compartment, his big shoulders shaking and his 
fingers pressed to his mouth, as though he feared 
a hemorrhage. The thing saddened me thus to 
pass by age and its inevitable weaknesses as one 

entered into the gate of pleasure! 

There had come on a little gust of rain and I 
went up through the city in a thin batter of white 
mud. I found the hostelry to be very nearly equal 

51 







Monsieur Jonquelle 

to its name. It is in a great semicircle above rising 
terraces set with orange trees—formal, as though 
painted upon the scenery of a theater. The inte¬ 
rior is upon a plan strikingly unique. The build¬ 
ing is in segments opening into the arc of a 
corridor; each of these segments has its separate 
stairway and its tiny elevator that ascends in the 
open hollow of the stair—a little gilded and pan¬ 
eled cage, operated by electric buttons. 

And here one has a curious experience of ser¬ 
vice. Every creature, from Monsieur Boularde 
descending, will run to fling open the doors to this 
dainty mite of a box, bow one in, close the doors, 
and send one on the way skyward. But one has 
to pilot this craft for himself and, when he has 
alighted, close the doors and return it. It is all 
cleverly worked upon a little nest of buttons. 
Each of the segments in the structure is a section 
of exquisite apartments. 

The lower and larger ones were taken for the 
season; but I was shown two farther up, looking 
out over Nice, that were vacant—each with a bal¬ 
cony and some extravagances in mirrors that 
added a hundred francs. I chose the top one; 
and in the morning when I came out from my bath 
and flung open the long window, and the balmy 
air and the sun entered, I decided that the balcony 
was worth the hundred francs. One needed just 
that above this fairy city, with its clean, red roofs, 

52 





The Alien Corn 


its mountains of dull-green olive trees, its inimita¬ 
ble sky, and the motionless sea with its vast chang¬ 
ing patches of color. There was no breath of 
wind; there was no wisp of cloud. I stood before 
it as before some illusion of the senses. How 
could Nature stage a thing like that? Yes, this 
balcony was clearly worth the money. At that 
minute the window below opened and some one 
stepped out. I looked down. 

A woman was standing there on the balcony. 
She wore a loose gown of delicate blue, and her 
hair hung to her waist in two wrist-thick plaits. 
I stared in a sort of wonder. The setting and my 
mood were agreeable to the entrance of some 
fairy creature. And here she was, as the painters 
were accustomed to present her in their pictures. 

The very words of the old story-tellers were ac¬ 
curately descriptive—hair as yellow as gold and as 
heavy as gold; and she was little and dainty, like 
the fairy women. I knew that her eyes were blue 
like the cornflower before she looked up. I must 
have made some sound, but she did not see me; 
and in a moment she went back through the 
window. 

I swallowed my breakfast—this is a practical 
world—and I made some inquiries of the servant 
who brought it up. The apartment was taken on 
this very morning. Madame Nekludoff and 
maid. A Russian then? “Out, Monsieur” A 

53 






? 


Monsieur Jonquelle 

^ —— ^ mmmmmmwmmmmmmmmm—mm —^ ^mmmmmmmmm m■mm m aaHMMMMi 

princess then, perhaps? He shrugged his shoul¬ 
ders and threw out his hands above my pot of 
coffee. How could one tell? If they said they 
were it was a sign against it! The coins were true 
and false! The latest princess of the blood was 
a dancer from Montmartre, with her hand in a 
banker’s pocket. And a negre from New York 
had traveled as a rajah! The truth was by con¬ 
traries, he thought—like dreams. Since this new 
guest gave no title, she doubtless had one. 

The old femme de chambre on the floor below 
was an expert in such matters, however. Mon¬ 
sieur understood? There were skilled dealers in 
jewels who, by the eye, could tell a spurious bril¬ 
liant. It was long experience, maybe, or a sort of 
instinct—one could not say. Well, the ancient 
Eda was such a judge of the human jewel. Should 
he enlist her service for Monsieur? I declined, 
and we closed the incident with a coin of the re¬ 
public. 

I went down and smoked innumerable cigarettes 
upon the great terrace among the formal orange 
trees. Strolling singers came and sang, and chil¬ 
dren danced; but somehow my interest in events 
was not with them. I had an eye upon that bal¬ 
cony, but no god moved. I went in to luncheon, 
and after that to the vantage of my window. It 
was in vain. 

Then, when I had given up and abandoned my- 

54 






The Alien Corn 


self to fortune, as Caesar used to do, the thing 
happened. 

I was going down in that absurd gilt box of a 
lift, when, as I approached the floor below, a little 
voice called out: “Ascenseur!” I had trouble to 
select the proper button, but finally I got it, and 
after some endeavors brought the craft to dock, 
and got the doors open. I saw Madame Neklu- 
doff for an instant before she recognized that I 
was not a servant. 

She was not the mere child that she looked in 
her fairy costume, but she was young—one or two 
and twenty, I should say. Her face in repose was 
saddened, as though she had tasted life and found 
it bitter. She was all in black, but there were no 
extravagances of mourning in her dress. She had 
chosen that color, I thought, that she might be the 
less conspicuous; but it was a failure to that end. 
The somber background served only the more to 
bring out the lights in her hair and the fair, trans¬ 
parent skin. 

She was in a panic of confusion when she saw 
that I was not a servant. 

“Oh, pardon, Monsieur!” she said. “I thought 
it would be le gargon. I am sorry! Pardon!” 
And she turned to go back to her apartment. 

I made the best continental bow I could. 

“Madame will do me a very great honor,” I 
said, “if she will permit me to take her down. I 

55 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


cannot pretend to a very considerable skill as an 
aerial pilot, but I think I can manage.” I went 
on, for I feared she would go away forever if I 
ceased to talk—and the fear was very truly 
founded: “There ought, of course, to be a genie 
with this magic box; but he is sleeping or on a 
journey, and in his absence may I not offer a neigh¬ 
bor’s service?” 

She declined, however, expressed her regret at 
having caused me this annoyance, and in some con¬ 
fusion returned to her apartment. 

I went down in no very genial mood. Here was 
the golden door in the wall gone shut before I 
could get my foot in. I held myself now some¬ 
what lighter in esteem. I must have bungled pretty 
badly. It would be my doddering, idiotic pleas¬ 
antries ! Whence is it that a man, ordinarily sane, 
has a seizure of these driveling witticisms upon 
the moment that the gods give him? 

This woman was accustomed to a formal cour¬ 
tesy. And here was a big, simpering barbarian 
who would be genial, and would seize upon the 
advantage of an error to strike up a galloping 
acquaintance. It was no vain institution—these 
continental manners; and we have them not. And 
therefore we must be misunderstood, our best 
motives wrongly interpreted, and ourselves cata¬ 
logued in a class of bourgeois. 

I went down to the Promenade des Anglais and 

56 






The Alien Corn 


sat there on a bench in the sun. The world went 
by on that great stone way paving the arc of the 
sea. Workmen in blue blouses were setting up 
standards along the streets, and cunning electrical 
devices, and building seats in tiers. Crowds of 
people moved like swarms of butterflies. An old, 
huge Italian came upon me with a basket of wire 
masks. He knew a little English and was proud 
to display it with his wares. 

The meester would go into the carnival this 
night, perhaps, with friends, in a carriage? They 
would have a bag of—I never could get the word 
—but I found out later that he meant the little 
clay balls that are thrown like handfuls of shot, 
in place of confetti, and must be kept off with a 
mask. And he displayed his wares—pink; blue; 
every color. The meester would need several per¬ 
haps ? He would not be alone in his carriage! 

I told him with some asperity of language that 
I had no carriage for this night—nor any friend; 
and that he would oblige me by going to the devil! 
But he was a rogue of perennial good humor. He 
leered at me across his basket. The meester 
would not go to bed this night because his spirits 
were cast down! This was the gala night. Nice 
would be wonderland this night! The gnomes, 
the elfin people, and all the grotesque creatures of 
the fairy world would possess the city! Men 
traveled from the ends of the earth for this night 

57 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


only. And would the meester go to sleep, then, 
like a lout before the fire? Let him secure a mask 
for two francs and forget the tables if chance were 
the offender—or his mistress if she had cut him. 
There would be fortune another day, and Nice on 
this night would be full of women; in fact, there 
was no supply of anything in France so plentiful. 

I got up from the bench and left him; but he 
followed me to say that he would keep his eye 
upon me and that I should purchase from him, not 
one mask, but two, or he was no honest tradesman 
from Bordighera and the son of a poet! 

I went into a shop on the Rue de Felix Fauvre 
and got an English book. But I could not have 
read the Memoirs of the Abbess of Odo. I pres¬ 
ently gave it into the hand of a young woman 
who sold me a ravissant cigar, manufactured in 
Algeria—quite true, as I discovered, and from 
the frayed cables in the harbor there! I went 
then to the Credit Lyonnais and tried to deposit a 
draft; but to all my tenders I received the same 
polite assurance in my native tongue: “Et es not 
sufficient.” I did not care, for I had money in 
my pocket; but the universe was out of joint. I 
took a fiacre to my hotel and sat once more on the 
terrace among the orange trees. 

Evening was descending, the air was motion¬ 
less, and the colors of the world were stolen out 
of Paradise. And yet, with it all, I sat before it 

58 






The Alien Corn 


some distance down in the Inferno because a cer¬ 
tain balcony was empty. The thing was incom¬ 
parably absurd—to be thus dispossessed by a 
fancy! But then it is the fancies in this life that 
have power to dispossess us! If one goes upon 
an adventure in enchanted countries, shall he be 
unmindful of the damsel he meets there? It is 
not so written in the tales of Bagdad! 

I was interrupted by a great buzzing. A gigan¬ 
tic bird circled over Nice; and far away, in the 
direction of Cannes, a speck was approaching; 
and behind it another, and still another, traveled 
in the dead air above the motionless sea like a pro¬ 
jectile, until it, too, became a monster bird with 
black wings and a yellow body. I might have 
looked for these creatures in this enchanted coun¬ 
try. Should one meet here every other wonder of 
Arabia and not find the roc! The whole aerial 
fleet of France, encamped in the flat meadows 
toward Cannes, was in maneuver. 

In a moment the windows were full of people. 
I looked for Madame Nekludoff; but, instead, 
there came out on the balcony a squat, middle- 
aged woman with the aspect of a peasant. She 
seemed to speak to some one inside, for I could 
see her lips move; and she looked down once at 
me; then she opened the windows as wide as she 
could get them, in order, I thought, that some one 
inside could see without coming out. It occurred 

59 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


to me then that my surveillance was observed by 
madame and that it annoyed her. 

I got up and went inside, took a cold plunge, 
got my dinner and determined to go out and see 
all the carnival, like any sensible person. Mon¬ 
sieur Boularde said ft would be time enough when 
I heard the cannon; but he was mistaken in that 
sign. There was a red glow over the city when I 
went out. The procession was beginning to enter 
the Avenue de la Gare. 

The streets looking into it were packed with 
people. I could see above their heads. Troupes 
of gnomes, hunchbacked, fearfully deformed, with 
large, nodding heads, passed. Gigantic cabbages 
and carrots followed; devils mounted on horse¬ 
back. Eight horses passed, dragging a red papier- 
mache lion twenty feet high and long in propor¬ 
tion; and on the head of the creature, in a pose of 
sublime heroism, stood Tartarin of Tarascon. 
Behind came the washerwomen of the Var, with 
faces greater than a winebarrel, that smirked with 
a sort of Titanic glee, which the men under the 
disguise helped out by doing an absurd little step, 
holding their petticoats in the tips of their fingers 
like dancers. 

I wished to get a little closer to the Avenue de 
la Gare, but I could not for the crowd of people 
and carriages immovable in the narrow street. I 
saw then the folly of going this night in a carriage. 

60 





The Alien Corn 


It became at once imbedded in the crowd, and one 
had to give it up and go on foot to see. I deter¬ 
mined to get into the Place Massena, so I could 
watch the procession enter it from the Avenue de 
la Gare. 

As I forced my way out of the crowd I saw the 
Italian who sold masks, with his basket on his 
arm and his big body on tiptoe, stretching up over 
the crowd. He seemed to divine my intention and 
followed me. The Place Massena was also 
crowded, and the stand of seats in the center was 
black with people. I understood then how only 
a Latin can make a fantasy in lights. 

Vast, gorgeous, fluttering butterflies caught in 
golden webs hung across the Avenue de la Gare, 
suspended above it at every cross-street, with the 
effect, when one looked along it, of being laced 
over with the innumerable webs of some monster 
spider, in which were entangled every variety 
of beautiful and delicate insect. And inclosing 
the whole of the Place Messena were vast fans 
of many-colored lights, radiating out from some 
grotesque head and standing above gorgeous 
draperies. 

On the west side of the square stood the 
pavilion of the King of the Carnival, hung in 
purple velvet, surmounted by a great circle of 
lights, studded with huge jewels. The King of 
the Carnival was himself now passing before it— 

61 





The A lien Corn 


were several varieties of watchdogs in elaborate 
Parisian uniforms. 

“Voila!” some one cried out. *'How excel¬ 
lently they sleep in Paris! Have they, perhaps, 
also a Madonna of the Lotus!” 

They were works of genius—those two floats; 
a piece of subtle, piercing sarcasm that only a 
Latin could have manufactured. And the whole 
of Nice shook, as Homer says, with inextinguisha¬ 
ble laughter. There drifted behind them a horde 
of specters, ghosts, wraiths—as though all the 
cities of the dead had emptied themselves into the 
Place Massena. 

Then came the great fabric of a dream—the 
shimmering fantastic palace of Harun-al-Rashid, 
raised, as by some incantation, from the baked 
earth of Arabia, with splendid white domes, deli¬ 
cate, lacy porticoes and arches, and gorgeous silk 
canopies, under which the houris of some divine 
harem danced and sang a weird, haunting, sensu¬ 
ous love song, with a shrill, high, passionate re¬ 
frain, ending in a cry of Allah! One got the very 
soul of the East, languorous and soft, dreamy 
with desire, steeped in perfume. 

Every variety of wonder followed—an endless 
procession of fairy extravaganza, until one be¬ 
lieved himself come into the enchanted city of 
Morgana the Fay. 

Midnight had arrived. The great floats were 

^3 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


a great figure of a jolly monarch, in striped hose 
and a slashed doublet, grasping in his right hand 
the image of a jester in cap and bells, and seated 
in a gigantic fiacre. My attention was taken from 
His Majesty by a storm of laughter. 

A mammoth float towering to the tops of the 
houses was entering from the Avenue de la Gare. 
An opera-bouffe pirate rode seated on the head of 
a great dolphin and preceded by a long boat of his 
crew, with their oars in the air. The thing was 
grotesque enough, for the leviathan had been 
caught with a thread of a fishline. But the roar 
of laughter was from another cause. Here was 
solved the immortal mystery that had baffled 
Paris: The jolly pirate carried the Mona Lisa 
under his right arm, and his left thumb to his nose, 
with its fingers extended—it is the oldest gesture 
in the world, to be found on a frieze in Pompeii, 
where the little boys salute with it those who come 
last in the chariot races of the circus. 

And following at the heels of the Bandit de 
Pegomas came les Gardiens du Louvre, sound 
asleep in the big empty picture frames, the faces 
inconceivably stupid and covered with spider webs. 
They rode propped up against the side of a rough 
wooden box, such as pictures are packed in, and 
they were drawn by a donkey, also with an empty 
frame around his neck; while on top of the empty 
box, as a delicate suggestion to the authorities, 

62 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

disappearing from the Place Massena. Crowds 
of shouting, singing, dancing maskers were begin¬ 
ning to fill the streets. The gnomes and the gob¬ 
lins were now abandoning the city to the nymphs 
and the satyrs. Fancy costumes, dainty and beau¬ 
tiful, supplanted the grotesque. The whole world 
was masked and arsenaled with confetti and bags 
of plaster pellets. One was seized, bombarded, 
whirled into a maze of dancers. 

Every moment the fun became more furious 
and abandoned. A hamadryad, standing in a 
bakers’ cart drawn by a donkey, declared that the 
donkey was a fairy prince that she would awaken 
into life when she could find a man to take his 
place. A dozen volunteered. She seized the hand 
of the one who arrived first, and drawing him up 
on to the platform of boards nailed across the bed 
of the cart, they began to dance le tango Argen¬ 
tina, the danse de Vours, the marche de dindon; 
while the crowd hung the donkey with garlands 
and tramped slowly round the Place Massena 
singing the songs of the carnival. 

A madness as of drugs and wine was on the 
city, but there was no man either drugged or 
drunken, except now and then an English or 
American visitor, who staggered with champagne 
and, in a city full of shouting revelers, was alone 
brutal. One of these proved an instrument of 
destiny. 


64 





The Alien Corn 


I was standing under the arch at the entrance 
to the Avenue de la Gare when I heard a woman 
cry out with a sharp exclamation of fear. I 
turned to see Madame Nekludoff struggling to 
free herself from the clutch of a big man in a 
black mask. He was dragging her by the arm, 
staggering, and shouting in English: 

“Come on, you hussy! Come on, you hussy!” 

The man was evidently inflamed with the riot 
of the carnival; and the woman, her hair tossed 
and her eyes distended, was in a very panic of 
terror. 

I forced my way through the crowd, wrenched 
his hand loose and struck him in the chest. He 
reeled back, cursing me in English. I drew 
Madame Nekludoff away into the shelter of the 
arch. She was trembling violently. 

“Oh,” she said, “it is you! I am so glad!” 

She would have fallen, but I put my arm round 
her and held her close. Her body relaxed and 
her head sank on my shoulder. I stood back in 
the shadow of the arch while the carnival rioted 
round me—a man come upon the very treasure of 
his dream! The limp, soft body seemed to cling 
to me; the delicate perfume of her hair was on my 
face. A great possessing desire came over me 
to gather her up in my arms and find her mouth 
and kiss her. It was my one chance, perhaps, in 
this world and forever more! Would I take it or 

65 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


let it go? But at that very instant the seizure 
of weakness passed. She swung out from me and 
stood up, but she still trembled a little and she 
kept hold of my hand. 

“Oh! the brute!” she said. She put her free 
hand up to her hair. Then she began to speak, a 
little gasp still in her voice: 

“I came out with my maid in a carriage, but the 
carriage could not move and we had to get out; 
we became separated, and I was caught in the 
crowd and carried along down the Avenue de la 
Gare. It was awful! I could not get out—and 
after that this beast caught me! What a horror!” 
She looked up into my face and smiled though her 
red mouth was still quivering. “I am sorry I was 
rude to you this morning.” 

She was like a child smiling through tears. 
Something in my bosom smothered me. I began 
to stammer: 

I am all alone. I do not know any one. I 
saw you there—down there on the balcony. I 
never saw a woman like you anywhere! You 
won’t—you won’t go away now?” And my hand 
tightened on her fingers. 

She looked at me strangely for a moment. 
Then she smiled. 

“How can I go away, my friend? I can no 
more get out of this crowd now than I could be- 
fore you came.” 


66 





The Alien Corn 


“But to-morrow,” I said, “you will let me see 
you?” 

She stood for some time before she answered; 
and when she spoke she did not look at me, and 
she seemed troubled and embarrassed. 

“I don’t think you will understand!” She hesi¬ 
tated and faltered with the words. “I am not 
quite at liberty—to do—to do as I like. I must 
be careful—very careful—just now. And our 
women are not free as they are in your happy 
country. And besides, my friend, it would be no 
kindness to you—it would only involve you in—in 
—I cannot say what misfortune. You are free. 
Remain free, my friend! No, I must not be seen 
with you. I am sorry!” 

“Then you need me!” I said. “Let me help 

you.” 

“No,” she replied; “it is impossible. You can¬ 
not help me. No one can help me! You must 
go away.” 

“That I will not do,” I said. “I must see you 
again somewhere.” 

“Oh,” she said, “how I hate things like this! I 
cannot pretend. I wish I could be quite frank 
with you. I wish I could tell you. But how can 
I! How can I!” 

Her voice trembled with emotion. I clung to 
the floating plank. 

“Once more,” I pleaded; “somewhere!” 

67 






Monsieur Jonquelle 

She wavered. 

“To-morrow afternoon, then, at three—at the 
gate of the convent on the hill above Cimiez.” 

She took my arm and we went out into the Place 
Massena. A shower of plaster pellets fell over 
us. The Place Massena was a maelstrom. 
Madame Nekludoff gave a little cry and covered 
her face with her arm. A voice spoke at my 
elbow. I turned to find again the big Italian and 
his basket of wire masks. 

“Two, meester?” And he leered at me, hold¬ 
ing up a pair of fingers. 


2 

There is a narrow open aqueduct threading 
along the great mountain over Nice—a tiny canal 
that carries the water for the city. I do not know 
in what far-off lake of snow water it begins, but 
one can follow it for miles, trailing gently through 
the olive groves, disappearing under a little shoul¬ 
der of the hills to come out in the sun beyond. A 
stream of crystal, uncovered and flowing gently, 
now and then a leaf or a wisp of grass or a bit of 
an olive twig on its surface. The grade of the 
aqueduct is almost imperceptible as it rises to the 
gap in the mountains, a V of blue descending like 
a wedge into the remote skyline. 

There is a path along this fairy water. I had 

68 





The Alien Corn 


come up on to the hill beyond Cimiez in the tram 
to the place where it ends abruptly in the middle 
of the road. There, a little farther on, I had 
found a white figure among the orange trees in 
the garden of the convent, and we had taken this 
path along the idling water into the mountains. 

I had believed yesterday that there could be no 
better background for Madame Nekludoff’s 
beauty than black and the severities of dress; 
but I was mistaken in that fancy. To-day she 
was in white—a thing imagined in Paris, but 
surely tailored in Bond Street—a French adapta¬ 
tion of an English shooting costume; the skirt in 
wide plaits; the coat with a belt and patch pockets, 
but fitting to the figure. The material was heavy 
Chinese silk, as firm and thick as duck, and only 
to be had of a tailor in London. 

Two things, however, were alluringly blended 
in this costume—the crisp freshness of out-of- 
doors and the softness of all things feminine and 
delicate, as, for instance, the first blossoms of the 
wild brier that go to pieces under the human hand. 
I thought the thing by its happy charm returned 
Madame Nekludoff to the first morning of some 
immortal youthfulness—as though on this after¬ 
noon, as in some Arabian story, cracking a roc s 
egg, I had found her sleeping within it, her chin 

dimpling in her silk palm. 

Moreover, the background of sadness in her 

6 9 







Monsieur Jonquelle 


face was gone. She laughed and chatted like a 
schoolgirl escaped from a convent. She stooped 
to gather the little flowers along the path, to show 
them to me and to point out their beauties. She 
would catch my arm and nestle down in the dry 
grasses when a bird sang, and hunt him out among 
the gnarled limbs of the olive trees; or she would 
pluck a reed and, kneeling by the aqueduct, steer 
the dead leaves that floated along as though they 
were elfin ships on some mysterious voyage. She 
would dip her fingers in the water and fling the 
drops in my face, and then spring up and run 
along the path, screaming with laughter like a 
naughty child. When I caught up with her she 
was changed again into a woman I had not the 
courage to touch. . . . And she would show me 
the Mediterranean, lying below like a sheet of 
burnished azure metal. 

I think there must be some law in Nice against 
traveling on the path along this aqueduct, for we 
met no one. The whole enchanted world be¬ 
longed to our two selves. We wandered on, fol¬ 
lowing this lost path through the great deserted 
mountain of olive groves. 

I do not know how the thing happened! We 
had come upon one of those narrow blades of the 
mountain that the aqueduct burrowed under. I 
had helped my companion over it, and we were 
now in a little sunny pocket, with an abandoned 

70 





The Alien Corn 


olive grove rising in terraces above us, and a great 
gorge below, full of reeds and opening like a 
door on the sea. There was no sound but the 
drone of far-off winged things in the air. I had 
Madame Nekludoff’s hand, when suddenly, taken 
by the great flood of an impulse, I swung her into 
the hollow of my shoulder, caught her up in my 
arms and kissed her. She gave a little gasping 
cry that I smothered on her mouth. 

“I love you!” I whispered. “I love you! I 
love you!” 

She threw out her arm with her hand against 
my shoulder, as though she would free herself— 
but the force of resistance seemed to go out of 
her hand; it crept up on my shoulder, then round 
my neck. She hid her face to escape the smother¬ 
ing kisses; but she clung to me, murmuring some¬ 
thing I did not understand. I held her with my 
left arm, put the hollow of my right hand under 
her chin, and turned her face out where I could 
see it. 

It was like the face of some dream woman 
rising out of a mirage of opium—the great wealth 
of glorious silken hair massed round it; the eyes 
closed; the sensitive red mouth trembling; and 
the delicate satin skin bloodless as a ghost. I 
kissed her again, bedding her soft throat in the 
trough of my hand. 

At that moment a great voice bellowed out in 

7i 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

the gorge under our feet. Madame Nekludoff 
wrenched herself out of my arms and sprang up. 
Far below us a big peasant slouched along a path 
through the reeds, on his way to Nice with a 
brace of pullets. He was lonely and had broken 
out into one of the booming songs of the carnival. 
He had a voice that would have filled the mag¬ 
nificent distances of opera; and all unconscious 
of us, having the great stage to himself, he bel¬ 
lowed notes that boomed through the cathedral of 
the hills. 

Madame Nekludoff stood breathing deeply and 
staring wide-eyed at the distant singer. She put 
her hands up to her hair and adjusted it with little 
deft touches. The color came and went in her 
face. Finally she went over to the little bank 
running along the aqueduct carpeted with dry 
grasses and sat down. She covered her face 
with her hands. 

There was something too personal and delicate 
in this simple act to intrude upon. She was so 
little and sweet, and the attitude so wistful and 
appealing, that I sat down on the grass beside 
her and waited with all the restraint that I could 
summon to my aid. It is not easily that one, a 
step across the sill from Paradise, waits at the 
door! 

Presently, with her hands remaining over her 
face, she began to speak hurriedly, her voice 

72 





The Alien Corn 


nervous, tense—running in and out of a whisper. 
And a story—big, vital, packed with tragedy— 
emerged. She etched it out with sure, deft 
strokes, leaving silences and inaudible words to 
furnish the background and the shadows. Her 
voice now scurried along like a frightened thing; 
now took the cover of silence; now crept along in 
the shadow of evil vaguely to be suggested; and 
then it became firm and sure, where a desperate 
resolution had been taken and carried out; and 
again fearful and hurried; then low and appre¬ 
hensive. 

I got the story warm and pulsing with life, as 
though, by some divine surgery, the woman had 
been thrown on to the slab of an amphitheater 
and the thing vivisected out of her bosom; and I 
listened, motionless and without a sound. But 
this equanimity was but an aspect of the shell of 
the man, as the body sometimes in sleep lies prone 
and motionless while the mind within it lives the 
wildest life. 

She had been sold to the Grand Duke Dimitri 
Volkonsky, that abandoned and profligate noble 
whom the Czar had banished out of Russia. 
Why soften the term? Sold was the only word 
for it! Her mother she had never known. She 
had lived with a decayed aunt on a little wasting 
estate a hundred and fifty kilometers east of Mos¬ 


cow. 


73 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


She had been educated in a convent and very 
carefully watched over. Poverty seemed to lie 
about her, but there had been money enough to 
give her every comfort, even in the dreary con¬ 
vent. There was always something sinister in 
this extreme care—in the good quality of the food 
always somehow provided—in the fire that al¬ 
ways burned in her room—in the exaggerated 
attention given to her person. 

Now and then her father came to visit her. He 
seemed to be a man of the world, always ele¬ 
gantly dressed; but she was not attracted to him, 
uneasy in his presence and always happy when he 
went away. His comings did not seem to be at 
the call of a paternal love for her. They ap¬ 
peared rather to be visits of inspection. He made 
the minutest inquiry into all the details of her 
daily life, and into her studies and accomplish¬ 
ments, and gave precise directions. He was par¬ 
ticularly anxious that she could speak English, 
French and Italian as perfectly as she spoke Rus¬ 
sian; and being himself an accomplished linguist 
he always spoke to her in these languages, chang¬ 
ing from one to the other in the middle of a 
sentence and at the half of an idea. 

His principal concern, however, was for her 
person. He wrote down instructions about her 
food, her baths, her exercise. When he had be¬ 
lieved her throat to be too thin he had ordered 

74 





The Alien Corn 


it massaged. He had prescribed gymnastics to 
develop her arms. She should walk but little, 
for he wished her feet to remain small and deli¬ 
cate. Thus her life ran until she was nineteen, 
when—two years before—her father had ap¬ 
peared, ordered her possessions packed and car¬ 
ried her to Paris. 

He took her to a house of old Paris near the 
Faubourg St. Germain, inclosed by an ancient 
wall, studded with iron spikes. Here he delivered 
her into the hands of a woman loaded with jewels 
—a big, old woman with a Hapsburg nose. 

“Princess,” he said, “my daughter lacks only 
one thing to make her the most attractive woman 
in Europe. Teach her that thing.” 

The old woman’s eyes blinked above the big 
pouches below her eyelids. 

“Eh, Michaelovitch?” she said. “Let us see.” 
And she got up and, turning the girl about by the 
arm, examined her as one would examine a colt in 
a paddock. Then she went back and sat down in 
her big gilt chair. “How long do you give me?” 
she said. 

“Six months, princess,” replied the man. 

The old woman considered. 

“A year, Michaelovitch!” she finally said, and 
held out her fat jeweled hand for the man to kiss. 
He carried the fingers to his lips and went away. 

For a year, then, this girl from a Russian con- 

75 







Monsieur Jonquelle 


vent was taught the arts and mysteries of dress 
and of the drawing room, under the eye and the 
hand of this terrible old drill-master, who had 
been a lady in waiting to a now vanished court. 
The great tradeswomen of the Rue de la Paix 
came and explained the secrets of their craft; the 
designers of the great houses studied her; charts 
were made setting out the colors and combina¬ 
tions of colors suited to her person. And always 
the old woman taught her every trick and every 
art whereby, in a setting of the most conventional 
manner, the feminine charm may be made allur¬ 
ing and sensuous. 

“It is not what is shown,” she was accustomed 
to say, “but what is threatened to be shown that 
plays the devil.” 

Then one day she sent for the girl’s father 
and said to him: 

“Michaelovitch, you have now in your hand 
the most merchantable commodity in the whole 
of France. Begone with it to the market!” 

Her father took his daughter then to the Hotel 
de Paris in Monte Carlo, and for a fortnight 
dangled her before the eyes of the Grand Duke 
Dimitri, who was forever experimenting with sys¬ 
tems in the Casino. He showed her in all her 
varieties of plumage against the background of 
the freshness of her youth. “My daughter!” he 

76 






The Alien Corn 


would say, as though his love had always inclosed 
her like a shell. And finally he had sold her. 

The woman’s voice hurried and stumbled on. 
Of course the conventions were to be followed! 
But it was a sale for all that, with a delivery of 
the article by the priest. The marriage was to 
be effected at the grand duke’s chateau in Haute- 
Savoie. She was taken there by the old woman 
who was now with her. It was a wild, deserted 
district of the Alps in the severities of winter. 
Toward the summit was an ancient monastery, 
hidden by a mer de glace. But a great cross a 
hundred feet high emerged. 

In the valley was a little village; and above, on 
a shelf of the rock, hung the red chateau, like a 
splotch of blood on the vast spotless carpet of 
white. 

She was dressed for the wedding at the inn in 
the village. Then the woman with her gave her 
into the hands of a big monk who took her to the 
chateau, the woman remaining in the inn. There 
she was married. Then she was shown to the 
grand duke’s retainers in a big, smoky hall, loaded 
with food and drink for a barbarian revel. 

It was the custom for the lord to sit at the 
head of this barbarian feast and start it on the 
way on the bridal night. That this custom might 
be followed she was taken to the bridal chamber 
by the priest, who acted now as a guardian, and 

77 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


the key turned in the lock—to wait the coming of 
her husband. 

The body of the woman rocked; her hands 
tightened over her face; her voice took the cover 
of breaks and silences. The vast horror of the 
scene emerged—the horror of loneliness, of ter¬ 
ror, of loathing. The girl stood in the middle 
of the great chamber, motionless with fear. A 
huge bed, raised on a dais, surmounted by a gilt 
crown and hung with curtains of silk, seemed to 
increase in size as under some hideous magic and 
crowd her into a corner. Shouts, songs and 
drunken voices mounted up through the walls to 
her. Then finally she heard the feet of men 
on the stair. 

The menace struck her into life. She ran to 
the window and threw it open, intending to fling 
herself out. There she saw that the whole wall 
was covered with vines. She crawled over the 
stone sill and, clinging to the net of vines, began 
to descend. Halfway down she heard a great 
bawling of obscenities and oaths; the drunken 
noble, flinging back the monks who sought to re¬ 
strain him, was coming after her over the sill of 
the window! He came out, one leg at a time, like 
some huge spider, his big body bulking shapeless 
in the window. 

He seized the vines as she had done and began 
to descend; but her own fingers had already 

73 






The Alien Corn 


dragged them loose or his greater weight was too 
much—for suddenly his body shot past her with a 
hideous cry, the arms extended like a cross and 
the straining fingers clutching handfuls of vines. 

She was now at the level of the floor below. 
There was a ledge here and a balustrade. She 
dropped on to it, followed it round the face of 
the chateau to a terrace and a path that led down 
into the village. In the road below she found 
the woman who had come with her, weeping, with 
a shawl over her head. She received her in her 

arms. 

A carriage that had been prepared to take this 
woman out of the country was waiting. The girl 
got into the carriage with her—and in the con¬ 
fusion they escaped. She did not know how badly 
the grand duke had been injured, but he had not 
been killed outright—that much she learned on 
the way out. Still, he must have been terribly 
hurt, else he would have taken some measures to 
intercept her. She did not know where to go; so 
she had come here—and here she was in all man¬ 
ner of uncertainty. It was only an hour of respite 
any way she looked. If her husband were alive 
he would presently seize her as a chattel that he 
had purchased. Hope lay in no direction that 
she could see. The very immunity in which she 
moved for the hour was sinister. She felt that 

79 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


something threatened—prepared itself—was be¬ 
ginning to move toward her. 

Madame Nekludoff rose. The declining sun 
and the wandering shadows lay soft about her. 
She stood with her arms hanging and her lips 
parted, the daughter of some pitiable legend; her 
eyes big and her face made slender by the mem¬ 
ories of peril. I stood up then and said what 
any man would say, in the courage and in the 
vehemence of youth. She should go free of these 
accursed vultures—and I grew white and desper¬ 
ate and hot with the words. 

She looked at me with a sad, adorable smile, 
like one who would believe in the prowess of her 
champion against a certain and determined knowl¬ 
edge. But she shook her head. 

“My friend,” she said, “you are fine and noble! 
You are, in very truth, the fairy prince! But I 
am not a fairy princess and this man is not a 
fairy beast. I am the wife of Dimitri Volkon¬ 
sky!” 

“But if he should die!” I cried. 

Her feet on the hard path did not move, but 
her whole body seemed to spring up, as though 
cords binding down wings had been suddenly sev¬ 
ered. Then she turned swiftly and put her cool, 
firm hand over my lips. 

“Hush!” she whispered. 

80 




The Alien Corn 


I took the hand and kissed it, and kept it in 
my own. And I said the words again: 

“If he should die?” 

She looked up slowly into my face, her eyes 
blue as the cornflower—hazy with a mist of tears 
—deep and saddening. 

“Oh, mon prince’’ she said, “things may hap¬ 
pen like that in your fairy kingdom, but not here 
—not in this world.” 

It did happen—and in this world! 

I do not know what I did on this evening or 
this night. At the gate of the convent in Cimiez 
I was banished, but I had wrung from Madame 
Nekludoff her permission to remain for another 
day— an d that day, as the Fates willed it, was 

time enough. 

That evening I doubtless smoked innumerable 
cigarettes on the terrace, under that halo-circled 
balcony; and that night I doubtless slept like one 
who guards a treasure. But in the morning des¬ 
tiny knocked on the door. 

I got my breakfast and was smoking by the 
window, looking out over this city of celestial 
colors, blended like the beauties of an Oriental 
carpet, where any extravagance of romance might 
happen in the coincidences and verisimilitudes of 
life. There was a timid rapping on the door, and 
the old woman I had seen on the balcony below 

81 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


entered. She seemed in confusion from some 
event and startled. 

Madame Nekludoff wished to speak with mon¬ 
sieur. Would he come down to her apartment? 
I went down like one who travels upon wings, 
though step by step and no faster than the maid 
on the stone stair. At the salon door I stopped. 

Madame Nekludoff was standing by a curtain, 
with her face turned away, while in an armchair, 
behind a table, sat a huge monk, his shoes and his 
clothing covered with dust. He wore the garb 
of those isolated monastic orders dwelling in the 
waste and perilous places of the earth. He 
seemed overcome with fatigue, like one who has 
traveled far. There was a bottle of wine on 
the table and some cold meats. 

The maid closed the door and withdrew. 
Madame Nekludoff moved along the curtain until 
she finally stood before the window, but always 
keeping her face turned away. Finally she began 
to speak. Her voice jerked along as though now 
and then some great emotion choked it. 

“Father Augustine is here. ... He has had 
a long journey—all the way down from Haute- 
Savoie. . . . The Grand Duke Dimitri is dead!” 
She moved along the window, still keeping her 
face turned away, until she reached the door to 
her bedchamber. “Sit down there by the table. 
He will tell you.” And putting her hand out to 

82 






The Alien Corn 


the knob of the door she turned it and went in. 

I was not, in truth, very greatly startled. I 
had somehow profoundly believed that this thing 
would happen—as a child profoundly believes in 
the ultimate beneficence of God. I bowed to the 
monk and sat down. The old man poured out a 
glass of wine and drank it very slowly. Then he 
put his hand into the bosom of his robe, took out 
a packet and laid it on the table. The packet 
was some twelve or fifteen inches long and several 
inches thick. It was wrapped in a silk cloth. 
Then he addressed me, speaking like one who is 
very tired. 

“My son,” he said, “the Duchess Dimitri will 
need the counsel of some one more familiar with 
the world than an old monk of Savoie.’ He 
paused and put his big hand on the packet. “I 
have been in great doubt about this matter; but 
it was the dying command of the Grand Duke 
Dimitri, and we are not permitted to disregard 
even the wishes of the wicked in the presence of 
death. That God permits the evil to work their 
will in this world is a great mystery—but He does 
permit it. How far, then, may we prohibit what 

He permits? 

“When it became certain that the grand duke 
would die he had a curious seizure. He railed 
at Satan, calling him a sneaking and detestable 
coward. He had spent a fortune and years figur- 

83 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


ing out a method to outwit Satan at one of his 
own devices; and, now that he had at last hit 
upon it, the Evil One had foully got him mur¬ 
dered before he could put it into effect.” 

The packet lying on the table had evidently 
been opened and discussed before I entered, for 
the silk cloth lay only loosely round it. The 
monk reached over and unfolded the cloth. 
Within it lay a great heap of hundred-franc notes 
and a letter with the seal broken. 

“This man,” continued the monk, “was the 
most inveterate gambler in Europe. He lived in 
that anteroom of hell at Monte Carlo, and he 
was forever laboring to invent some system of 
play that would win against the devices of Satan 
there. At the time of this mad, shameful mar¬ 
riage he believed he had perfected such a system, 
and he had prepared this money with which to 
test it. The monk stopped, looking down at 
the floor. “It was a fearful thing to see—this 
evil, impotent man in his frenzy! We bade him 
remember God and the saints; but he replied, 
cursing, that his concern was with Satan, who had 
played him false; and if he could think of any¬ 
body he could trust he would be avenged. But 
he could think of no one who would not take his 
money and betray him, as the devil had—for all 
he knew were in the devil’s service.” 

84 






The Alien Corn 


The old man tasted the wine and set it back 
on the table. 

“Then one night, as the end approached, we 
spoke to him of this young girl, and reminded 
him that this marriage would not be recognized 
in Russia—and that his estates would go to his 
family there; nor would it be recognized in 
France, there having been no civil ceremony. And 
we urged him to take some steps to provide for 
and establish the young Duchess Dimitri in her 
marital rights. The dying man was sitting in his 
bed bolstered up with pillows. At the mention of 
the Duchess Dimitri he burst out into a great bel¬ 
low of exultation. He would beat Satan with 
her! And he had a dispatch box brought to him, 
took out this packet of notes and scrawled a let¬ 
ter. The letter and the money he charged me to 
deliver into her hands. . . . After that” and 
the monk again looked down at the floor the 

grand duke died in great peace. 

He remained silent for some moments, as 
though lost in thought over this strange event. 
Then he looked up and handed me the letter. 

“It is the wish of the Duchess Dimitri that you 

should read it.” 

It was an impressive and medieval thing this 
letter. In spite of the abominable way in which 
he had treated this woman he now addressed her 
in a manner stately and noble. It was a letter 

85 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


from the grand duke to the Grand Duchess 
Dimitri Volkonsky, setting out how treacherously 
he had been dealt with by the Evil One and 
begging her to avenge him according to the plan 
that he pointed out. It was written in the most 
formal manner, but in words simple and direct, 
as became a great noble addressing the great lady 
of his house. 

Then followed the directions. He was sending 
her one hundred thousand francs; this money was 
to be played at Monte Carlo according to a sys¬ 
tem he inclosed. This system would overcome 
the percentage in favor of the tables, insure the 
duchess an enormous fortune, and finally bank¬ 
rupt the Casino. Thus the Evil One would be 
discomfited and the duke avenged. Then fol¬ 
lowed a brief description of a system of martin¬ 
gales, which even one but little acquainted with 
roulette could presently master. 

The monk indicated the packet. 

“My son,” he said, “what shall the Duchess 
Dimitri do?” 

I was in no doubt. 

“Play the money at Monte Carlo,” I said, “as 
the dead man has directed.” 

I was moved by worldly wisdom here. I knew 
that this woman would never take the money be¬ 
fore me on the table, and there was no dowry 
for her except what might be gained by following 

86 





The Alien Corn 


this bizarre request. Besides that, the thing 
pressed upon her as a great sinister trust, from 
which the romantic nature of a woman could 
never escape. It lay too strangely within the 
atmosphere of a crusade. 

This thing had impressed the monk—the de¬ 
sign of the wicked working out the will of God. 
Suppose the profligate dead man had, by chance, 
devised a system that would make roulette im¬ 
possible! Even in this brief moment over the 
duke’s plan of play I saw that it was devised to 
recoup losses and escape the danger of the zero. 

The monk drummed on the table with his 
fingers. 

“I do not know,” he said simply—“even after 
long reflection. Perhaps one who has served for 
life with Satan, and near his person, may have 
learned the joint in his armor where the arrow 
may smite him. Who can say? By the evil are 
the evil overthrown.” He remained for some 
time quite motionless; then he added: “But the 
Grand Duchess Dimitri cannot go into a gambling 
house like any common woman.” 

“I will go for her,” I replied. 

“My son,” he said, “I am only an old monk, 
accustomed to simple peasants. This thing is 
beyond me. Will you tell the grand duchess what 
you have decided?” 


87 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


I rang for the maid and asked for Madame 
Nekludoff. 

Presently the door of the bedchamber opened 
and she appeared, but she did not enter. She 
stood on the threshold like one in great distress, 
and she looked wistfully to me as to one upon 
whom she now depended. She was all in black. 

She listened without speaking a word; but 
when I had finished she said with a gentle dignity 
that she would be governed by my counsel. If I 
thought this bizarre trust ought to be carried out 
she was content. But would I please not go a 
step beyond the very letter of the directions? 
Would I play only the identical money the grand 
duke had sent for this strange purpose and come 
away when this money had passed out of my pos¬ 
session? She did not care whether this system 
won or lost. She only cared to be rid of this obli¬ 
gation as quickly as it could be done. . . . And 
then—would I come back to her? 

Would I come back to her! 

These were the only words that the woman 
seemed to speak. The others—all the others— 
were dead and unimportant trivialities; they 
were nothing. But these words were a bridge of 
light arching over an abyss of misery. She stood 
with her head lifted, her eyes dreamy, her slender 
face gleaming like a flower. . . . Would I come 
back to her! 


88 






The Alien Corn 


At noon I went out to Monte Carlo. A mistral 
had come in from the sea and there was a fine, 
drizzling rain. I went up in the lift to the ter¬ 
race below the Casino, and walked along on the 
gravel beside the great balustrade. The eternal 
pigeon-shoot went on in the tiny circle of green¬ 
sward beyond the railroad track. A live bird 
would be thrown up by a trap and killed before 
the bewildered thing recovered its balance, and 
a brown dog trotted out and carried it in. The 
bird had no chance and the brown dog was like 
some abominable fate. I passed round this end 
of the Casino and went up the steps to the main 
entrance before the beautiful gardens. 

In the bureau, after an examination as before 
customs, I got a red octagon-shaped card, with 
my name on it and the date, gave up my coat and 
hat at the window of the cloakroom, and went 
into the main salon of the Casino. There was 
the usual crowd round the tables, even on this de¬ 
pressing day—that silent, strained, hideously 
eager crowd, moving noiselessly and speaking low, 
as in the presence of the dead. There were no 
voices except those of the croupiers—“ Messieurs, 
faites vos jeux . . . Jeux sont faites. . . . Rien 

ne va plus.” 

I wanted to find a seat; so I paid twenty-five 
francs admission and went into the salon beyond. 
There was also a crowd here; but finally I got a 

89 






Monsieur Jonquelle 

Seat before a table, put my packet of notes down 
beside me, and began to play according to the 
Duke Dimitri’s directions. 

I put a hundred-franc note on the black. The 
black won. I took the note which the croupier 
gave me and put it into my pocket, leaving the 
original note on the black. This time the red 
came up. I put another of the Grand Duke 
Dimitri’s hundred-franc notes on the black—for 
I was always to play the black. Again the black 
lost. 

I was now behind; and, according to the sys¬ 
tem, to recoup this loss I must advance on the 
martingale. I put three hundred francs on the 
black. Again the black lost and again I played 
three hundred francs. This time the black won. 
The winning canceled the losses of the single 
hundred-franc plays, but the bank remained ahead 
on the first three-hundred-franc play; and to over¬ 
come this I now put five hundred francs on the 
black. The black: came up. I had now overcome 
the total loss. 

The grand duke’s system directed that when 
the loss was overcome the play was to begin 
again with a hundred-franc note on the black. 
So long as the black won, the play was to remain 
a single hundred-franc note on the black; but 
when there was a loss the play was to advance 
on the martingale—3, 5, 7, 9, n, 13, 15, I7 , 

90 







The Alien Corn 


19, 21, and so forth—until the loss was over¬ 
come. Then, no matter how far up one had gone 
on the martingale, when the loss was wiped out 
he was to begin again with a single hundred-franc 
note. 

As the play went on I began to realize how 
exceedingly ingenious this system was. The maxi¬ 
mum play permitted at roulette is six thousand 
francs. On a system of simple doubling with an 
initial play of one hundred francs, after the first 
loss, this maximum would be reached in five plays; 
but under this system the player could advance 
on his martingale twenty-nine times before he 
reached the maximum. Again, in simple doubling, 
the loss on the zero might be ruinously great; but, 
with this system, the chances on the zero were 
distributed. 

I saw, too, how safe this system was. I seemed, 
all that afternoon, to be merely exchanging the 
grand duke’s money for that of the bank; but in 
reality I won steadily. Often I was forced far 
up on the martingale, but never beyond the thirty- 
seven; and five times I lost on the zero—but for¬ 
tunately at low plays. There was no great dif¬ 
ference in the return of the black and the red. I 
had no luck; but, so long as the black returned as 
often as the red, I won enough on this cunning 
system to meet the occasional loss on the zero 
and gain a little on the bank. 

9i 




Monsieur Jonquelle 

The system was slow. It required a large sum 
of money; and it was as safe as human ingenuity 
could make it. 

I was surprised to learn, however, from the 
whispers about me, that the Grand Duke Dimitri 
was mistaken when he believed himself to have 
invented this system. It was known to the players 
round the table. 

The colors returned in an almost equal rotation 
during the afternoon. But that night I had a run 
of luck, and I got up from the table with a 
hundred and thirty thousand francs. 

I was tempted to go on, but the Duchess 
Dimitri had bade me come away when I had tech¬ 
nically carried out the dead man’s directions. I 
got my coat and hat and went out. On the steps 
of the Casino I stopped. 

The whole world had changed as under the 
enchantment of a magician. The mistral and 
the rain had vanished. A sky sown with stars 
arched over a city of the fairy. Everywhere 
were the lights, the sounds, the splendors of a 
pageant. I seemed to have entered, through the 
door behind me, into a garden party of some 
princely despot with the wealth of Midas and the 
imagination of a dreamer. And out of the stag¬ 
nant air of the Casino I came now into the per¬ 
fume of sweet, wet groves. I went down the steps 
and round the Casino on to the great terrace. 

92 





The Alien Corn 


Long shadows lay across an enchanted sea, 
reflecting a million lights; and thin quivering lines 
of silver slipped in over the burnished water. 
And out of that mysterious hazy distance, where 
the water and the heavens joined, any strange 
craft might have entered this fairy port. All the 
romance of it entered and possessed me. 

I got the midnight express and returned to 
Nice, and in fancy I put my shoulder to every 
turn of the carwheel, for I traveled back to the 
Duchess Dimitri and the paradise of life that now 
lay before us. The flaming sword was gone out 
of the gate of it now. The profligate beast was 
dead; his trust had been carried out and she was 
free! 

The maid was waiting when I knocked gently 
at the door of the salon. No lights were burning, 
but the long casement windows were open and 
the tropical night filled the room with a soft 
radiance. 

The Duchess Dimitri, a vague figure in this 
fairy light, sprang up with a little startled cry 
when I entered. 

“Oh,” she said, “you have come back! Nothing 
terrible has happened?” 

“Nothing terrible has happened,” I said. “I 
have brought back one hundred and thirty thou¬ 
sand francs.” And I laid the packet of notes upon 
the table. 


93 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


A stifled murmur, as of great anxiety removed, 
trembled in her mouth. 

“Oh,” she said, “I am so glad that dreadful 
thing is done! I was afraid!” 

It was late and the maid was waiting at the 
door, but I went over and took her two hands 
and carried them to my lips. 

“Sweetheart,” I whispered, “you shall not be 
afraid any more forever!” 

I got up early—for joy does not lie abed—got 
a cup of coffee and went down to smoke on the 
terrace and wait for the window behind the hal¬ 
lowed balcony to open. But another was before 
me—the tall, gray figure of the Prefect of Police 
sat at a table, trifling with a cup and a very 
black cigar. 

“My friend,” he said when I was seated and 
the pleasantries were over, “the consignment of 
money sent from Paris to the banks in Algeria 
was not stolen on the sea. It was taken en route 
to Marseilles. But we shall presently have the 
thieves, for the notes are marked. Every house 
in Europe has been advised and they cannot be 
presented at any bank.” 

Out of my observations of yesterday, but with¬ 
out a thought of any relation to this matter, I 
replied: 

“But they could be played at the tables at 
Monte Carlo.” 


94 





The Alien Corn 


The body of Monsieur Jonquelle did not move, 
but his fingers snapped the cigar into a dozen 
pieces. 

“Mon dieu!” he said very softly. “I have the 
head of a pig! This robbery will be the work of 
that big old Slav, Dolgourky, and his devil daugh¬ 
ter. I wish he had kept to his trade of actor in 
the theaters of Petrograd instead of setting the 
police of three nations by the ears. He is a 
genius at impersonation, and he speaks ail lan¬ 
guages as they are spoken in their capitals. . . . 
There was money enough in it. . . . And that 
woman, in tragedy, would carry Paris off its feet 

at the Odeon.” 

He mused a moment, crumbling the bits of 

cigar to dust in his fingers. 

“Ah, oui! They will remember where I have 
forgotten. But they will require a catspaw for 
old Dolgourky is known at the tables. 

I no longer listened. I got up slowly and went 
into the bureau to ask a question of Monsieur 
Boularde. 

There is an Eastern tale of a magician who 
hypnotized a corpse so that it walked and uttered 

voices. I went in like that. 

The proprietor met me, with his genial smile. 

No—Madame Nekludoff was no longer a 
guest. She had gone aboard a yacht at Ville- 
franche at five o’clock in the morning! 






IV .—The Ruined Eye 

Monsieur Jonquelle waited on the great 
terrace for the Viscount. Below were the end¬ 
less wheat-fields, crimson dotted with poppies, the 
white road stretching away toward Paris and the 
ancient village nestling into the hill. The chateau 
was almost sheer above. One could toss a stone 
from its terrace into the narrow street. 

The brilliant morning sun lay on the world, a 
vagrant wind wandering inland from the sea 
rippled the wheat-fields into waves, and on the 
horizon now and then a puff of gray dust would 
spring up, and a big French limousine would crawl 
out like a black beetle on the white ribbon of road. 

“Vraiment! It is wonderful—this picture I” 
he said. “But what is God about, to hang it be¬ 
fore the door of the meanest man in Europe?” 

He was dressed for the road—a light English 
tweed, a gray cap and motor goggles, of which 
the big green lenses gave him the huge eyes of 
some poisonous insect. He removed the goggles, 
folded them together into a leather case and put 
them into his pocket; then he leaned over the 
balustrade and looked down a hundred feet to the 

9 6 


The Ruined Eye 


door of the inn, where a boy in a blue blouse wiped 
the dust from his gray two-seated motor. u Ah, 
ma beaute!” he said. “It is a joy to travel with 
a lass like you!” 

The words were a mere caress, however, as the 
eye passed on, for the Prefect was searching the 
village carefully, door by door, until finally he 
came to a little shop, before which a gilded watch 
swung on an iron rod. He marked that the door 
under the sign stood open; then a big voice thun¬ 
dered behind him on the terrace. 

“Who the devil are you?” 

The Prefect turned about to see a tall old Eng¬ 
lishman standing in the door tearing his card into 
bits with little nervous jerks of his fingers. The 
man had a thin, crooked nose, a sort of pale rep¬ 
tilian eye, and the livid color of irascible old men. 

“My card would have told you, Monsieur, 

replied the Prefect. 

“Curse your card!” cried the old man, tearing 
the pieces into still finer bits. You can tell me 
yourself.” 

“With pleasure,” returned the Prefect. “I am 
Monsieur Jonquelle.” 

The old man flung away the remaining frag¬ 
ments of the card with a derisive gesture. 

“Monsieur Jonquelle, eh?” he snapped. “Well, 
Monsieur Jonquelle, who sent for you? 

“Alas!” replied the Prefect with composure, 

97 







Monsieur Jonquelle 


“like death, I am hardly ever sent for.” He 
looked about for a chair, carried it to the balus¬ 
trade and sat down; then he lighted a cigarette. 
“Pardon, Monsieur,” he added; “there must be 
quite three hundred steps in your path from the 
village.” 

The old man exploded with anger. 

“Eh? What?” he spluttered. “Confound 
your insolence! I’ll have you kicked down every 
one of those three hundred steps.” 

The Prefect blew little rings of white smoke 
upward into the soft air. 

“Would it be wise,” he said, “in view of the 
exigencies of chance? Somewhere, on the descent 
I might take an injury to my eye and claim dam¬ 
ages in the sum of five hundred thousand francs.” 

“The devil!” cried the old man, a sudden calm 
descending on him. “What do you know about 
that?” 

“Why, this, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect, 
leaning over the balustrade and pointing down¬ 
ward with his smoking cigarette: “Yonder, I be¬ 
lieve, is the curve in the road where Mademoiselle 
Valzomova’s car came suddenly upon Monsieur’s 
horse; and yonder is the oak tree into which 
Monsieur’s horse shied; and extending south at 
right angles to the road is the limb that struck 
Monsieur on the temple, resulting in a concussion, 
which Monsieur advises Mademoiselle Valzo- 

98 





The Ruined Eye 


mova has caused the total loss of sight in his 
left eye, ‘whereby and by reason whereof’ ”—the 
Prefect consulted a letter from his pocket as 
though to refresh his memory—“Monsieur le 
Vicomte will sue Mademoiselle in the courts for 
five hundred thousand francs.” 

“And I’ll do it!” interrupted the old man. 
“The devil take me if I don’t!” 

“Unless-” continued the Prefect. 

“Unless!” snarled the old man. “There is no 
unless. I’ll sue out the writ to-morrow in Paris.” 

“Unless this thing that the Vicomte himself 
has written,” the Prefect went on—“unless Made¬ 
moiselle chooses to settle with the Vicomte imme¬ 
diately for the damage. Well, that is what 
Mademoiselle chooses to do.” 

The Viscount was taken by surprise. 

“Eh? What?” he cried. “And so the hussy 
is going to settle, is she?” 

“Monsieur,” replied the Prefect—and there 
came a hard note into his voice—“is it not enough 
to take Mademoiselle Valzomova’s money? 
Would you insult her also?” 

“Damn!” returned the Viscount. “Do I have 
to hunt about for one of your pretty phrases when 
I name an opera singer? What’s the creature 
anyway?” 

Monsieur Jonquelle looked up with a calm, in¬ 
scrutable face. 


99 







Monsieur Jonquelle 


“I will tell you what she is,” he said: ‘‘She is 
one of the best women in Europe. But for her, 
a hundred little children would die every year in 
the heat of Paris. It is Mademoiselle Valzomova 
who sends them to the sea. And, therefore, it is 
Mademoiselle Valzomova who gives them life 
and Mademoiselle Valzomova who is the angel 
of a hundred mothers. Ah, Monsieur, I who 
know the wickedness of many know also the good¬ 
ness of a few! 

“And, moreover”—he paused and looked out 
across the incomparable valley below him—“it is 
Mademoiselle who offers to the weary and the 
wretched a blessed brimming cup of forgetfulness. 
Men listen to her and the bitterness of life ebbs 
away from them—she sings in the Place de 
1 Opera and we hear the beating of wings above 
the iron din of the elements, and understand again 
honor and duty and undying love; we feel the 
truths of our mysterious religions and the loom 
of some immortal destiny. 

“Ah, Monsieur, believe me, the prophets are 
dead; but there is sometimes born after them a 
greater than the prophets. Eh bien! Has the 
good God, then, only mad priests in His service?” 

“Humph!” snorted the Viscount. “If the 
singer is such a wonder she will have plenty of 
money to pay for my eye!” 

ioo 






The Ruined Eye 


The Prefect looked up suddenly into the man’s 
face. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “is it really your inten¬ 
tion to insist upon a money payment from a wo¬ 
man for this accident?” 

The Viscount exploded. 

“My word!” he cried. “Has a man anything 
more valuable than his eye?” 

“Some men,” replied the Prefect, “believe them¬ 
selves to possess a thing more valuable.” 

“Well,” snapped the Viscount, “I am not one 
of them.” 

“No,” replied the Prefect; and he looked over 
the old man slowly from crown to toe, as though 
he were some new and peculiar creature. “You 
are not one of them!” 

He put out his middle finger and struck the 
ashes from his cigarette. 

“Ah, well,” he said, “if you insist upon it what 
can Mademoiselle do but pay? She cannot deny 
the accident—the resulting injury as claimed by 
Monsieur she might, of course, deny; but how 
would she sustain that contention in any court? 
The brain centers of vision are deep-seated and 
mysterious; they cannot be examined by any 
known appliance. And if these remote areas 
have been injured by a concussion the fact that 
all visible organs are in order does not prove that 
Monsieur’s sight in that eye remains to him.” 

IOI 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

He paused. “It is then merely a question of the 
amount that Mademoiselle must pay. I hope,” 
and he looked anxiously at the Viscount, “that 
Monsieur does not mean to ask five hundred 
thousand francs?” 

“Not a sou less!” 

The Prefect looked down at the red tiles under 
his feet. 

“It is impossible!” he said. “Consider, Mon¬ 
sieur, how great a sum is five hundred thousand 
francs—half a million—a fortune in France! 
Why, Monsieur, I can find you a thousand men in 
Paris who will pluck out an eye for a tenth of the 
money. Five hundred thousand francs! Mon 
Dieu! the half of Europe would sell their souls at 
that figure! It is impossible!” 

Then it was that avarice dispossessed the Vis¬ 
count’s irascible mood. 

“Bah!” he said. “I’ll warrant the singer con¬ 
siders five hundred thousand francs no very great 
sum.” 

The Prefect reflected. 

“Well,” he said, “you know how careless of 
money actresses are. To them it has no value. It 
is the need of it only that they measure. If they 
are down they will haggle for a franc. If they are 
in funds you may fill your pockets. It is so with 
all temperaments that create. Did not Dumas 
keep a bowl of gold coins on the mantelpiece from 

102 







The Ruined Eye 


which any one could help himself? If Monsieur 
were in Paris to-day he might find Mademoiselle 
willing to consider a sum that a week later she 
would think out of the question.” 

The Prefect flung away the fragment of his 
cigarette and rose. 

“Bonjour, Monsieur!” he said. U I came out 
from Paris to see if the Vicomte Macdougal could 
not be induced to withdraw this demand upon 
Mademoiselle Valzomova; but it is clear, I think, 
that my mission is quite hopeless. Monsieur will 

adhere to his own ideas.” 

Then he stopped suddenly and turned about. 

“Pardon, Monsieur,” he said. “Can you tell 
me which turn of the highway yonder I must take 
in order to enter Paris on the road from Rouen? 
There is a sharp curve on that road about which 
the Department of Highways has been several 
times advised. It promised yesterday to put up 
a proper warning and I wish to see how that 

promise has been kept.” 

The old man had followed him for a step or 

two on the terrace. 

“It is the second turn to the right,” he an¬ 
swered. “But a moment, sir. Why do you tell 
me that if I were in Paris to-day I might find this 
woman more—er—reasonable than later ? 

“Because, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect, “it is 
to-day that Mademoiselle receives the advance 

103 







Monsieur Jonquelle 

payment on her engagement at the opera. And 
so to-day she will have a very large sum of money 
in bulk, but she will not keep it. No one of them 
ever does. . . . Ah, merci, Monsieur. It is the 
second turn to the right then.” 

But the Viscount called after him: 

“A word, if you please: Do you think I ought 
to go to Paris to-day?” 

“The Vicomte will do about that as he likes,” 
replied the Prefect. 

“Wait!” And the old man followed after him. 
There was the lust of money in his hard, irascible 
face. “Would you take me up in your automo¬ 
bile?” 

Monsieur Jonquelle suppressed a gesture of an¬ 
noyance. 

“I suppose I could come back,” added the old 
man hurriedly, “on the evening train.” 

The Prefect shrugged his shoulders—he was 
not entirely able to conceal how little the sugges¬ 
tion pleased him; but he replied with a show of 
courtesy: 

“If Monsieur does not object to half an hour’s 
delay by reason of the Rouen Road I shall be 
very glad to take him.” 

The old man snapped at the invitation. It 
was a chance to reach Paris at no cost and he 
shuffled into the chateau for his coat. The Pre- 

104 





The Ruined Eye 

feet looked after him, making a gesture of con¬ 
tempt. 

“Pardieu!” he said. “When these creatures 
become intolerable in their own countries they buy 
an estate in France! Under what curse of God 
are we?” 

The Viscount presently returned in an old 
weather-beaten coat and the two men went down 
the steep path to the village. The great roadster 
was standing as the Prefect had left it, before 
the door of the inn; the boy in the blue blouse 
had wiped it clean as a jewel. 

Monsieur Jonquelle put on his goggles and 
gloves; then he went round the car to make sure 
that the petrol tank had been filled. To see clearly 
into the opening of the tank he removed the 
goggles and held them in his hand. He was im¬ 
patient and in no gentle temper, and there was 
presently a tinkle of broken glass. He looked 
down with an exclamation of annoyance. One of 
the eyepieces of the goggles had been shattered 
against the fender of the car. 

“Diable!” he said. “It is the only pair I 
have!” And he began to break the cracked glass 
out of the rim with his thumb. 

The Viscount came forward with expressions 
of regret. Now that he was using Monsieur 
Jonquelle for his own ends, he could afford to be 
good-humored. One would have said that the 

105 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


temperaments of the two men had changed about. 
The Prefect was now irascible and the Viscount 
suave. 

“Too bad!” the latter continued to say. “Per¬ 
haps you can get a pair from the innkeeper.” 

“No such luck,” replied the Prefect; “but if by 
chance there is a horloger in this village I might 
get a lens put in without delay.” 

“There is one at the end of the street,” said 
the Viscount. “I will show you.” And he began 
to walk toward the sign of the gilded watch that 
the Prefect had marked from the terrace of the 
chateau. 

The Prefect followed. He walked rapidly, 
like one dominated by ill temper. 

“Monsieur,” said the little workman when the 
two men were come into the shop, “a lens like this 
is not to be had outside of Paris.” And he turned 
the goggles about, shaking his head. 

“Well,” snapped the Prefect, “you can put in 
a piece of window glass then—it will keep the 
dust out of my eye.” 

“Out, Monsieur,” replied the workman; “I can 
do that.” 

He measured the eyepiece, cut out a disk of 
glass and fitted it quickly into the rim. He 
worked swiftly and with little nervous glances at 
the Prefect. When he had finished Monsieur 

106 





The Ruined Eye 


Jonquelle threw a five-franc piece on the watch 
case and the two men returned to the inn. 

The engine spun under the touch of the electric 
button and the great gray car glided out of the 
village, Monsieur Jonquelle driving and the Vis¬ 
count in the seat beside him. They had taken the 
second crossing into the Rouen Road when Mon¬ 
sieur Jonquelle turned to his companion like one 
sharply seized with an important memory. 

“Diable!” he said. “I think only of myself!” 
And putting up his free hand he unhooked his 
goggles and handed them to the Viscount. “Par¬ 
don, Monsieur,” he said, “I had forgotten your 
injured eye. These will at least keep out the 
dust.” The Viscount began to refuse, saying 
there was little dust and that he was in no dis¬ 
comfort; but the Prefect would not hear him. 

“I have always heard that when one eye is lost 
the other is more susceptible to strain,” he con¬ 
tinued as he helped the Viscount to adjust the 
goggles; “and it is this brilliant sun on the white 
road that plays the devil with one’s sight. . . . 
Voila! We have the green lens over monsieur’s 
sound eye! That was a lucky accident to break 
the left glass. Monsieur le Vicomte will be pro¬ 
tected in both eyes from the dust and in his good 
eye from the glare of the road. . . . And now, 
ma beautel” And he pressed his foot on the 
throttle. The car shot out like a racer under a 

107 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


lash and the hedges along the roadside leaped 
backward. 

The car traveled without any sound except a 
low hum as of a distant beehive. It gained speed 
like an arrow and the dust trailed behind in a 
long rolling cloud. They traveled swiftly on the 
white road in the brilliant sun. 

It was at the beginning of a long descent to¬ 
ward Paris that Monsieur Jonquelle began to 
have trouble with his brakes, and he ducked down 
among his levers to see what the trouble was. 
As he took a turning on the steep hill, with his 
head a moment among his nest of levers, he called 
suddenly to his companion: “Is there a signal 
before us?” 

“Yes,” replied the Viscount. 

The Prefect sat up, with a volley of Parisian 
oaths, turned the car into the hill and, braking 
with a twist of the front wheel, stopped against 
a signpost by the road a hundred meters from the 
curve. 

“Nom d’utt chien!” he cried. “Does the De¬ 
partment of Highways believe itself to conduct a 
tram that it puts up a signal like that!” 

“What’s the matter with it?” said the Viscount. 
“The letter A stands for the word to stop in your 
language and red is a danger warning.” 

“Precisely,” cried the Prefect; “but what dan¬ 
ger is there if one knows of the curve ? And why 

108 





The Ruined Eye 

stop when the road is open? Does one take on 
and discharge passengers at this point as he 
travels into Paris, like a bus to the Gare du Nord? 
There should be here the usual signal indicating a 
sharp descent on a curve—and they put up a 
thing like that! . . . Well, they shall hear from 
me—and soon!” 

He got out and tightened the brake band of his 
car with a heavy wrench, and the two men con¬ 
tinued their journey. The brakes held now and 
the car swept down the long descent, sped away 
on the great road and presently entered Paris. 
On his way to the Place de l’Opera the Prefect 
stopped before the Department of Highways. 

It was strange how completely the trivial inci¬ 
dent of a roadmark had dispossessed the great 
matter upon which the Prefect had set out. His 
mind seemed emptied of it. Placarded on the 
walls of Paris were the beautiful lithographs of 
Mademoiselle Valzomova, this idol of the opera, 
whose conspicuous generosity had so tremen¬ 
dously impressed him, and he passed them with 
no sign. 

Moreover, by a curious ironical chance he car¬ 
ried into Paris this mean old man, in his dirty 
coat, that he might prey upon her. And yet this 
bitter ending to his pretentious endeavor was hid¬ 
den from before his eyes—screened off by the 
petty error of an official of highways. By such 

109 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


inconsequential incidents are the minds of mortals 
dominated! 

“A moment, Monsieur,” he said to the Vis¬ 
count, bringing his car to the curb. “I wish to 
lay a complaint before the Department of High¬ 
ways. Will you verify my statement?” 

“With pleasure,” replied the old man, glad to 
be a gadfly on any withers; and the two entered 
the building. 

A grave man with a long lean face sat at a desk 
in the private office of the Department of High¬ 
ways ; and behind him, nosing in a ledger, stood 
a big Italian, with bristling, close-cropped hair. 
The Prefect began at once with his complaint. 
He had hardly got it explained when the man at 
the desk stopped him. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “do you make this charge 
from your own knowledge or at the information 
of another?” 

“I saw it myself,” replied the Prefect. 

And I saw it too,” said the Viscount, stepping 
up before the desk. 

The official looked up. 

“And who are you?” he asked. 

“The Viscount Macdougal, my fine sir,” 
snapped the old man. 

“Ah!” said the official, taking up his pen. He 
turned abruptly from the Prefect as though he 

no 





The Ruined Eye 


were a person of no concern and addressed him¬ 
self to the Englishman with grave courtesy. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “I shall be pleased to 

hear you.” 

He listened with the closest attention, as to a 
distinguished person whose every word was to be 
marked; and on a pad before him on the desk 
he wrote down precisely and with care the exact 
statement of the Viscount Macdougal. 

The big Italian, who had been deep in his 
ledger, now rose and came round the official’s 
desk. He stopped directly in front of the Vis¬ 
count and slowly wagged his head. 

“So,” he said, “you saw all this through your 

goggles!” # n 

“I did!” snapped the Viscount. “What of it?’ 

The Italian did not reply; but abruptly in the 
quiet and gravity of the room he laughed. The 

Viscount turned on him in a fury. 

“Why do you laugh, my fine fellow?” he 

snarled, his face turning livid. 

“I laugh,” replied the Italian, because if the 

Viscount Macdougal saw a red letter on a black 
background through the goggles he now wears he 

saw it with his blind eye! 

“My blind eye!” cried the Viscount. 

“Exactly,” replied the Italian—“yo ur blind 
eye! You have a green lens over your good eye 

ill 







Monsieur Jonquelle 


and it is a principle of optics that red on a black 
field seen through a green lens is invisible!” 

The Viscount opened his mouth as though he 
would utter some awful invective, but for a mo¬ 
ment he did not speak; then he said strangely, as 
though he addressed an invisible person: 

“Will you tell me who these people are?” 

And the Prefect, Jonquelle, replied to him: 

“With pleasure, Monsieur le Vicomte—the one 
who writes is the Magistrate Lavelle, and the 
one who laughs is the oculist Bianchi.” 





V .—The Haunted Door 

Early in April the Marquis Banutelli closed 
his villa at Bordighera, on the Mediterranean, 
and traveled to Geneva. He was in frail health, 
enervated by the sun of the Riviera and dis¬ 
pleased with life. 

He had intended to write a great opera at Bor¬ 
dighera, but he could not get the thing to go upon 
its legs. The Marquis blamed the commonplace 
times for this plague upon his opera. There was 
no longer anything mysterious or unknown in the 
world. A tram carried tourists to the Sphinx; 
the Americans had penetrated to the Pole or 
pretended to have done so—and the English had 
entered Tibet. 

Moreover the whole race of men was tamed; 
the big, wild, barbaric passions that used to 
rend the world were now harnessed to the plow. 
Men no longer climbed to the stars for a woman 
or carried a knife a lifetime for an enemy. The 
tragedies of love and vengeance were settled by 
the notary and the law court. Romance and 
adventure had been ejected out of life. 

113 


Monsieur Jonquelle 


The Marquis was by no means certain he would 
find in Geneva what he had failed to find in 
Bordighera—that is to say, inspiration for his 
opera—though this city was the very realm of 
romance. It lay across the bluest lake in the 
world, beneath the sinister ridge of Saleve; be¬ 
hind it was the range of the Jura; and beyond it 
Mont Blanc emerged on clear mornings from the 
sky. But he was sure to find there a bracing 
climate when the wind, like a curse of God, did 
not blow from the north. 

The Marquis went to the very best hostelry and 
sat down in a sunny room where he could see that 
sight of the faerie—the great two-pointed, rose- 
colored sails of the stone boats descending Lake 
Leman. 

It was early and there were but few guests—a 
Japanese, with a French wife; two or three Eng¬ 
lish families, and a distinguished German. The 
German, alone, interested the Marquis Banutelli. 

He was perhaps sixty-five—a commanding 
military figure. It was clear from every aspect 
that the man was a person of importance. Italy 
and the German Empire were now in very close 
relations. The Kaiser was thought to be mobiliz¬ 
ing his armies. England and France seemed 
about to be forced into the field. War was in the 
air; one saw soldiers on every hand, and all 
the fierce old hatreds had risen from the fields of 

114 



The Haunted Door 


Jena and Auerstadt, Metz and Sedan, as on the 
daybreak of a resurrection. 

The Marquis inquired at the bureau, learned 
that the German was the Prince Ulrich Von Gratz, 
and presented himself. The two sat over their 
coffee a long time that evening in the foyer of the 
hotel. The talk ran upon the necessities and bar¬ 
barities of war. Von Gratz was a soldier; he had 
gone through the Franco-German War: and his 
vivid and realistic experiences, the experiences of 
a man of action in the deadly struggle of two 
infuriated peoples, fascinated the Italian, who 

w r as essentially a dreamer. 

The interest and appreciation of the Marquis 
seemed to inspire Von Gratz, and he entered into 
the details of that hideous barbarity by which the 
German armies crushed the provinces of France. 
The Marquis had read the La Debacle of Zola 
and the tales of Maupassant, but he never until 
this day realized the stern implacable savagery 
with which the uhlan had forced the French peas¬ 
ant to remain a noncombatant while the German 
armies marched over his fields to Paris. 

The acquaintance ripened into a fine intimacy. 

During the day Von Gratz was not usually to 
be seen, and was understood to be concerned with 
one of those ponderous works on the science of 
war that engages the excess energy of the military 
German as a system of philosophy engages that 

US 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


of the scholastic. In the evening he smoked very 
black cigars from Homburg and talked with the 

Marquis. 

The conversation was in French—a language 
the Italian invariably used in every country but 
his own. The German also spoke it with fluency 
and something approaching a proper accent. The 
Marquis Banutelli remarked upon this accom¬ 
plishment, and Von Gratz replied that it had 
served him when he had occupied the Valley of 
the Jura during the Franco-German War. He 
added that his headquarters had been at Ferney, 
but a few miles from Geneva; and he mentioned 
the further confidence that one of his objects in 
coming to Geneva was to go over again the scenes 
of his military occupancy there. But this thing he 
had hesitated to do. The war spirit in France 
had vitalized old memories. He had held the 
province with an iron hand. He would be remem¬ 
bered and not welcome. 

The incidents of this district, lying so close to 
Geneva, interested the Italian; and, as he was 
accustomed to walk in the afternoon, he deter¬ 
mined to walk there. Von Gratz envied him this 
privilege, and deplored the fact that the present 
temper of France prevented him from accompany¬ 
ing the Marquis; but he got maps from the con¬ 
cierge and marked a route which he particularly 
wished the Marquis to go over. 

116 





The Haunted Door 


The following afternoon the Marquis took the 
tram out of Geneva, got down when he had 
crossed the hill toward Ferney, and, according to 
his map, set out on a little road into the country. 
This road, bordered part of the way by great 
trees, within half a mile entered France. The 
Marquis knew the border by the square stone, 
carved on the French side with a fleur-de-lis. He 
also knew it by the little hut of plaited twigs in 
which the gendarme who guards the roads out of 
France protects himself from the rain and the 
winds. 

This was an unkempt country road, and such 
are not usually under a sharp surveillance, but 
to-day it was sentineled like the main road into 
Geneva. 

The Marquis was not molested and continued 
on his way; but he felt that the military instincts 
of France were at this time particularly alert. 
The road continued westward toward the Jura, 
but the Italian turned into the long wood that lies 
in the low valley between Geneva and Ferney. On 
all sides the flowers were beginning to come out. 
The path the Marquis followed had once been an 
ancient road, but it was now overgrown and, in 
fact, no longer even a path. x One had continually 
to clamber over logs and to put aside the branches 
of trees. 

Banutelli reflected that this had doubtless been 

117 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


a military road through the forest in the time of 
the Von Gratz occupation, and he determined to 
follow it. Presently it came out into a little 
meadow entirely inclosed by the wall of the forest. 

An abandoned farmhouse stood here where the 
road emerged. It was a big, old house with tim¬ 
bered gables and a farmyard inclosed by a stone 
wall. The house and premises, though heavy and 
of sound material, were ragged with age. And 
this deserted house, hidden in the wood and to be 
reached only by an abandoned road, inspired the 
Italian with a sense of remote and sinister lone¬ 
liness. Thus in old tales were haunted houses 
environed or the venue of revolting crimes. 

He continued across the bit of meadow and 
through the fringe of forest, and found himself 
come almost immediately upon the main road 
from Ferney to Geneva. The Marquis crossed 
the border toward the environs of Geneva, where 
several gendarmes lounged on a bench in the sun 
before the bureau of police. And again he felt 
that all France was under a searching military 
surveillance. 

That night he described the ancient road and 
the abandoned house to Von Gratz. He had been 
quite right in his conjecture. The Prince had 
occupied this very house when he held the prov¬ 
ince, and he had cut this road through the wood. 
He listened with interest to every detail. And 

118 







The Haunted Door 


when the Marquis, having concluded his descrip¬ 
tion, added the sinister impression he had received, 
Von Gratz very gravely shook his head. 

Some things had happened there. ... It was 
no gentle work to hold a hostile district. He sat 
for some time silent, his face stern with the mem¬ 
ory, but he did not disclose the reminiscence. 
Again he expressed the desire to revisit this dis¬ 
trict, and again he regretted that the hostile atti¬ 
tude of France made it unsafe to do so. 

He showed so keen an interest in all that the 
Marquis had observed that the Italian continued 
to take his walks in that direction. And thus, 
through the medium of another, Von Gratz was, 
in a manner, able to revisit the province which he 
had held under his heel. 

He was interested in everything, but especially 
in the old road and the abandoned farmhouse, 
as—the Marquis sometimes thought—the crimi¬ 
nal agent is interested in the place where he has 
accomplished a secret crime and would know how 
it has changed. It happened, for this reason, that 
Banutelli frequently chose this route; he remarked 
the trees that had failed across the ancient road, 
and the height and thickness of the bushes that 
had grown up in it. 

Von Gratz was especially interested in every 
change that had taken place in the abandoned 
farmhouse. Did the great nail-studded door still 

119 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


hang upon its hinges, and the like ? He seemed 
to learn with relief that this door was closed; and 
one night, when the Marquis reported that it was 
open, he exhibited a marked concern, as though 
every ravage of time upon this deserted house was 
in some sinister manner correlated to his own 


The desire now to see this place for himself be¬ 
came a sort of obsession. He inquired precisely 
at what points on the route one was likely to meet 
the peasants. The Marquis replied that he would 
meet no one in the wood, and that the only peas¬ 
ants he was likely to pass were two big old men, 
who had recently come to spade up a potato field 
in the corner of the meadow beyond the farm¬ 
house toward Ferney. 

The Marquis thought that Von Gratz was un¬ 
duly concerned about entering this bit of French 
territory. He had only to go in civilian dress, 
follow the old road, and turn back before the 
farmhouse to avoid the peasants entirely. And 
when he went up to his rooms that night it was 
with a suspicion that there was something 
appalling and sinister lying back of the German s 
anxieties. This impression was strengthened on 
the following day when he received a note from 
Von Gratz, saying that he had determined to visit 
the scene of his former headquarters, and closing 
with the strange request that if he did not return 

120 



The Haunted Door 


to luncheon the Marquis himself should come to 
search for him. The note prayed Banutelli, under 
no circumstances, to speak of the matter, and to 
come alone. 

The Marquis was not very much concerned for 
the safety of Von Gratz, but when he did not find 
the German at luncheon, and learned that he had 
gone out of the hotel early and had not returned, 
he became uneasy, took the tram out of Geneva 
and crossed the French border. 

The afternoon was perfect; the sun soft and 
caressing. The peasants were at work in the dis¬ 
tant fields, and the gendarme dozed in his twig 
hut. The Marquis entered the wood and followed 
the old road. The buds were swelling; little 
flowers were beginning to appear; and he won¬ 
dered how anything harmful could have menaced 
Von Gratz in the peace and serenity of this April 
afternoon. He began to be impressed with the 
folly of his errand; but when he stopped on the 
edge of the wood to look over the abandoned 
farmhouse he thought he saw something move at 
a gabled window. 

He looked closely and presently became certain 
that a hand beckoned him. The Marquis crossed 
to the open door and entered the farmhouse. The 
house was much larger than the Marquis had 
imagined and very stoutly built. It had been long 
abandoned, but it remained sound and tight. 

12 I 






Monstcur Jonquelle 

The Marquis’ footsteps echoed on the stone 
stairs, and in spite of his courage he felt a sense 
of fear of what he might be going to meet, 
neared the top of the stairs he heard his name 
called, and glancing up he saw Von Gratz s face 
as though it looked at him from the wall. The 
next moment he realized that the German was 
peering at him through a little opening cut in a 

“Prince!” cried Banutelli. “What has hap¬ 
pened to you? And why are you here?" 

“Marquis,” replied Von Gratz, “I am a pris- 

OI1 “A prisoner!” echoed the Italian. “Who has 
made you a prisoner? I will go at once for t e 

gendarmes.” 

“No, my friend,” replied Von Gratz, “the gen- 
darmes would only get me killed. My one hope 
lies in your courage and devotion. Please to look 
through the window behind you and see if the^two 
old peasants are at work in their potato field.’ 

The Marquis turned to the little high window 
behind him on the stairs, and by standing on tip¬ 
toe was able to see out. On the edge of the forest 
beyond the little meadow the two old peasants 
labored with their spades, digging up the sod. 
The sun lay upon their stooped shoulders and 
their bent backs, and a vagrant wind stirred their 
white hair. They reminded the Marquis of the 

122 



The Haunted Door 


humble figures of the Angelus. He returned to 
the door. 

“The peasants are there,” he said. “What have 
these simple creatures to do with this outrage?” 

“Simple creatures!” cried Von Gratz. “God 
in Heaven! The spirit of vengeance—tireless, 
patient and inexorable—has never dwelt on this 
earth as it dwells within the bosoms of those two 
peasants! Prepare yourself, Marquis, to hear 
the strangest thing that ever happened. 

“When I entered this valley during the Franco- 
German War three brothers occupied this house. 
It was night when my advance reached the wood, 
and one of these brothers, coming to the door, 
fired a fowling-piece. When we entered he gave 
up the gun and explained that he had not intended 
to resist soldiers, but had been alarmed by a noise 
he did not understand. He was a fine young 
peasant, concealed nothing, and answered every 
question without evasion. It was impossible not 
to believe him. I would willingly have set him at 
liberty; but he had fired on the uhlans and an 
example had to be made. 

“I occupied the house and imprisoned him for 
five days in this very room in which I now stand 
until his offense should be thoroughly known 
throughout the whole province; and at the end of 
that time I had him stood up before the door 
of this house and shot, as a warning that any non- 

123 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


combatant firing on the soldiers would be thus 
shot against the door of his house. Each of the 
two older brothers came to me privately and 
begged me to shoot him instead of the boy; when 
I refused they looked at me for a long time, as 
one has seen an animal look at something it does 

not intend to forget.” 

Von Gratz paused. 

“Marquis,” he said, u y 0U perhaps observed in 
the environs of Ferney an ancient chapel sur¬ 
mounted by a crucifix. When these two peasants 
became convinced that I would not take their lives 
in exchange for that of the boy, they went to this 
chapel in Ferney to pray.” The German’s voice 
descended into a whisper. “And they have con¬ 
tinued to go there every day for forty years!” 

The man’s voice died out and he remained for 
some time silent, while the Italian endeavored to 
realize the vast infinite faith that no period of 
time could weaken, and that returned day after 
day, in the unfailing belief that it would in the end 
receive what it asked. 

The voice began with an abrupt and unexpected 
question. 

“Do you believe in God, Marquis? ’ 

The amazed and bewildered Italian shrugged 


his shoulders. 

“I don’t know,” he replied—“sometimes.” 

“I never did,” continued Von Gratz. “But 


124 



The Haunted Door 


listen! The war passed and I returned to my 
estates in Baden. I was young then. I grew old. 
I forgot this incident. But one night in the castle 
at Waldshut I dreamed that I was standing in the 
edge of the wood before this house, looking at 
the door. The door was closed. I seemed greatly 
relieved—and I woke. 

“Time ran on and the dream returned. And 
always as the thing reappeared my anxiety about 
the door became greater, and my relief at finding 
it still closed increased, as though this closed door 
stood between me and some appalling doom. The 
dream never varied. I looked always at this door 
in a sweat of dread!” Von Gratz paused. Then 
he went on like a disembodied voice: 

“One never escapes from the superstitions of 
his childhood. I had heard that if one touched a 
dead man on the forehead he would not dream of 
him, or if he went to the scene of a haunting obses¬ 
sion it would disappear. I could no longer endure 
this hideous anxiety that recurred always in a 
shorter cycle. I determined to come here and re¬ 
visit this house in the hope that this dream would 
cease. . . . But I found all France inflamed, and 
I hesitated until you told me that the door was 
open. Then I determined to go. I dared not 
think what this accursed dream might become, 
now that the closed door was open.” 

The face of Von Gratz, framed in the narrow 

125 






Monsieur Jonquelle 

aperture of the oak door in the dim light of this 
garret, appeared fantastic and ghostlike. 

“I came here. When I reached the border of 
the wood I was seized by two men, the sleeve of a 
blouse stuffed into my mouth, and carried into this 
house and up the stairs to this room. I was thrust 
in and the door locked. ... Yes, the men were 
the two old peasants out there. . . . They told 
me that from the day their brother was shot 
against the door they had never ceased to pray to 
God to bring me back here; and they had never 
ceased to watch for me. They had abandoned the 
house as a sort of trap. They gave me precisely 
what I had given my own prisoner—a jug of 
water, black bread and a Bible. And they told me 
they would keep me a prisoner for five days, as 
I had kept the brother, and then shoot me against 
the door as I had shot him.” 

Banutelli was appalled. 

“Great God!” he murmured. “What a re¬ 
venge ! What a revenge!” 

And he continued to repeat the word, as though 
the very sound of it projected before him all the 
faith and patience and barbarity of these two 
terrible old men. Then he turned as though to 
descend the stair. 

“I will bring the gendarmes. The French 
officers, at least, are not savages. 

Von Gratz stopped him. 

126 



The Haunted Door 


No, my friend—that will not do. You would 
get me out, to be sure, but not alive, Marquis. 
Do you think a German officer could be rescued 
by gendarmes to-day in France and nol: somehow 
lose his life in the engagement—especially if that 
officer was Ulrich Von Gratz? Besides, how 
should I be regarded by the Emperor if I were 
found on French soil under such conditions? 
What explanation could be given? What inter¬ 
national complications would follow? ... I 
have thought the whole thing out. I must depend 
solely on you, Marquis. My brother Rudolph is 
now in Basel. Go to him there; tell him this thing 
in person and he will come here with his servants 
and release me. There is time enough. You will 
reach Basel to-morrow; these peasants will not 
murder me until the five days are up, and Rudolph 
will act swiftly.” 

“But, Prince,” interrupted the Marquis, “how 
will your brother know that I come from you? 
There is nothing here with which to write a mes¬ 
sage. Suppose he should refuse to believe me—or 
take me for a madman?” 

“I have also thought of that,” replied Von 
Gratz. 

He went away from the window and presently 
returned with the Bible of which he had spoken— 
a small, thick old book with a leather cover. 

“During the Franco-German War,” he con- 

127 








Monsieur Jonquelle 


tinued, ‘‘the officers of the division to which 
Rudolph and myself belonged made use of this 
simple device. If a messenger bearing a dispatch 
brought with him any sort of book, no matter 
what, marked with a fingerprint on any three of 
its successive pages ending in seven, the dispatch 
of that messenger was to be taken as of the most 
urgent necessity. I have thus marked this Bible 
on its seventh, its seventeenth and its twenty- 
seventh pages. Show it to my brother, and he will 
not only believe what you say but he will also 
know by this sign that I am in the most desperate 
position.” 

And he handed the thick old book through the 
opening in the door. 

“You will find Rudolph Von Gratz at the Hotel 
of the Three Kings. And now farewell, mv 
friend! My life will depend on your devotionV 
Go out of the house on the side you entered so 
that the peasants cannot see you from their field, 
flank the woods round them and return to Geneva, 
on the road from Ferney, as you have been accus¬ 
tomed to do.” 

The Marquis put the book into his pocket and 
left the house. He entered the woods and made 
a detour round the little meadow, keeping well 
within the cover of the trees; but when he came 
opposite to where the peasants worked he 
stopped. f 


128 







The Haunted Door 


The afternoon was entrancing; a warm vitaliz¬ 
ing sun lay upon the earth; a breath of balmy air 
moved; the sounds of men and horses came to him 
from the distant fields; away in the blue sky the 
lark trilled. The mood of the world wa9 a bene¬ 
diction. And the Italian shuddered! 

It was the custom of poets in their tragedies to 
make the aspect of Nature symbolic of their motif, 
and it was thought that this relation struck the 
human mind with greater terror; but the exact 
reverse of that conception was true! 

Under the gray roof of the distant farmhouse, 
peaceful in the sun, a human soul, entrapped by a 
supernal fantasy, awaited a doom as tragic as any 
in the Book of Kings! And before him, to the 
eye, two gentle old men digged a field that they 
might cultivate the fruits of the earth—while, in 
fact, they pursued an appalling vengeance. 

The Marquis lifted his hat and wiped the sweat 
from his face. He looked at the two peasants, 
their bodies awkward and uncouth, their faces 
stolid; and he thought how he would have passed 
them by on his quest for the fierce old passions of 
the race. And yet these simple creatures had con¬ 
ceived and carried out a thing unequaled even in 
the Wars of Yahveh. 

And this big, vivid, hideous tragedy went on, 
invisibly and without a sign, at the heart of this 
perfect day! 


129 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


The man could not escape from the dominion 
of this oppressive idea; he continued to consider 
it as he crossed the fields and on the road from 
Ferney to Geneva. But out here in the sun, as he 
approached the voices and activities of men, as 
he observed the children at play and listened to 
the peasants calling in good will to one another, he 
found it difficult to accept as one of the realities 
of life the thing he had just experienced. It 
seemed now—here—like the grotesque fancies of 
a nightmare. And unconsciously, as a sort of 
verification, the Marquis took the Bible out of his 
pocket and began to look at the pages Von Gratz 
had named. Yes; they were marked as the Ger¬ 
man had said, with a sort of smear, as though by 
a finger blackened on the hearth. 

He was about to return the book to his pocket 
when he realized that the road before him was 
barred by a gendarme. He looked up. He had 
come to the line where the road crosses out of 
France. On a bench before the door of the bureau 
of police a thin, gray man, who looked like a 
gentleman of leisure, sat reading a journal. The 
Marquis stepped back and put the book into his 
pocket. At the same time a second gendarme 
came out into the road. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “we are compelled to 
detain you.” 

130 





The Haunted Door 


“Detain me!” echoed the Marquis. “For what 
reason?” 

“Monsieur will doubtless learn that later on,” 
replied the gendarme. 

The Marquis was indignant. 

“I protest against this outrage!” he said. “I 
am a subject of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, 
and I demand instant permission to proceed!” 

The gendarmes did not reply, but they now 
advanced as though they would take the Italian 
into custody. At this moment the man who sat 
on the bench before the door put down his jour¬ 
nal, rose and came out into the road. As he 
approached the Marquis he bowed. 

“Pardon, Monsieur,” he said, “I have some 
trifling influence with the authorities here and I 
shall be charmed to be of service to so distin¬ 
guished a personage as the Marquis Banutelli.” 

The Italian was at a loss to understand how his 
name and title should be known to this stranger; 
but he observed that the man was a gentleman and 
he was grateful for any mean9 that offered him an 
escape from the gendarmes. 

“I thank you, Monsieur!” he said. “I shall be 
obliged to you—or to any one—for permission to 
continue on my way to Geneva. I cannot under¬ 
stand why this indignity is put upon me.” 

The stranger made a slight conciliatory gesture. 

“Ah, Monsieur, nations will have their little 

I3i 






Monsieur Jonquelle 

foibles.” He looked at his watch. “And, now, 
if the Marquis Banutelli will do me the honor of 
drinking a cup of tea”—he indicated a neighbor¬ 
ing villa—“I think I can promise him safe conduct 
to Geneva within the hour and the end of his 
anxieties.” 

They entered a gate of the villa and ascended 
a long garden that gained the summit of a hill 
toward Lake Leman. Here was a view unexcelled 
in the environs of Geneva. In one direction lay 
the ranges of Haute-Savoie and the White Moun¬ 
tain in the sky, and in the other the Jura and the 
incomparable valley beneath it. 

At a table, on the summit of this garden, the 
stranger placed a chair for the Marquis facing 
the panorama of the Alps, and himself sat down 
beyond him, w T here he could look into the French 
valley and the great road. Tea was brought and 
while he poured it and added a bit of lemon the 
stranger addressed the Marquis. 

“Monsieur,” he began, “I esteem myself singu¬ 
larly fortunate in this honor. I have long wished 
to have your opinion upon the structure of the 
German opera.” He made a gracious gesture, as 
though in deference to so distinguished an author¬ 
ity. “It has always seemed to me that the ma¬ 
chinery of German tragedy is unnecessarily pon¬ 
derous, weighted down with the clumsiest devices 
and demanding at every turn heavy, lugubrious 

132 





The Haunted Door 


effects—as though the mystic German mind moved 
always in a dense, almost palpable atmosphere of 
romance. Or am I in this, Monsieur, merely mis¬ 
led by prejudice?” 

The tea was excellent, the stranger had an 
engaging manner, and the question was launched 
upon the very sea the Marquis sailed. He was 
compelled to consider it; and he found his host 
following his words with so close an interest, such 
intelligent comment and so high a regard for the 
speaker’s opinion that the Marquis was charmed. 

A quarter of an hour—a half—three-quarters 
of an hour—fled. The Marquis was deep in the 
subtleties of his critique when suddenly his host 
pointed down to the road from Ferney. 

“Pardon, Monsieur,” he said, “but is not the 
person yonder, at this moment crossing out of 
France, the Prussian general, Prince Ulrich Von 
Gratz?” 

The Marquis sprang up and turned about so 
quickly that he almost overthrew the table. The 
gendarmes were standing stiffly at attention and 
the big military figure of the German was striding 
past them into Switzerland. The Marquis caught 
his breath with a hissing murmur through the 
teeth. 

“Thank God!” he cried. “He is safe!” 

“Safe!” echoed his companion as though in as- 

133 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


tonishment. “How could a distinguished stranger 
be other than safe on the soil of France?” 

“But he is free! He has escaped!” continued 
the excited Banutelli. “He goes safely into 
Geneva! And I left him but now a prisoner 
awaiting death!” 

Hurriedly and with gesticulation he recounted 
all the details of this sinister trap in which Von 
Gratz had been taken, with the supernatural 
pressure that had forced him to enter it, the fatal 
patience that received him, and the diabolic venge¬ 
ance that awaited him—together with the part he 
had played and the message that he now carried 
to Prince Rudolph, in Basel. 

The tall, gray man standing before the amazed 
Italian stooped and lighted a cigarette, striking 
the match slowly and with deliberation. Then he 
held it up, watching the flame die out, with a 
gentle, whimsical smile. 

Ah, Marquis,” he said, “as you so aptly re¬ 
marked but now in your discourse, the Germans 
are incurably romantic!” He threw away the bit 
of match with a little fillip of the fingers. “Who 
but a Teuton, if his object was to get something 
taken out of France, something he feared to carry 
himself and which was to be placed by his agents 
in an abandoned house, with the signal that the 
door, usually closed, should be open when the 
thing was ready . . . what intriguer, Marquis, 

J 34 





The Haunted Door 


I ask It of you, but a German, to accomplish that 
simple end, would resort to all these involved and 
ponderous properties of the tragic poets, including 
dreams and visitations, an imaginary execution 
and a secret cipher, and involving an empty house 
tied up in a French lawsuit, and two simple old 
peasants who never harmed a creature in this 
world!” 

“But, Monsieur,” cried the astonished Mar¬ 
quis, “what thing could Prince Ulrich Von Gratz 
wish carried out of France, and who are you to 
know all this?” 

“If you will permit me to examine the Bible in 
your pocket,” replied the stranger, “I think I can 
undertake to reply.” 

The Marquis handed the man the book. He 
put it down on the table and, slipping the blade of 
a pocketknife along the edges of the leather cover, 
ripped it open. Within, making the thick back, 
were two closely folded packets of glazed cambric, 
crowded with drawings. 

“These,” he said, “are the plans of all the 
French forts along the range of the Vosges. . . . 
And I, Monsieur, am Jonquelle, the Prefect of 
Police of Paris!” 







VI .—Blue hers March 

It was impossible to believe that this was 
war. 

The little village lay white in the sun; dogs 
idled on the doorsteps; children were in the road. 
The place was only a handful of cottages lying 
along the ridge of the hills beside the feudal 
chateau; an oasis in a Sahara of ruin. 

The fight arched over it. That never ending 
duel of field guns. The Germans were entrenched 
west of this high ground and the French southeast 
of it. Neither could advance. The French had 
control of the village but they did not occupy it. 
The science of artillery fighting had changed. 
Field batteries were planted under hills now and 
not on the crest of them. 

The struggle here had a certain aspect of per¬ 
manence of which the French Captain of Artillery 
took advantage. He came from Tarascon and 
when the sun was out nothing could depress him. 

* mm e cl a song as he moved along the road. 

It was a song with a soft, haunting refrain: 

“Ah, qu. elle est belle La Marguerite!” 

1 3& 


Bluchers March 


His voice would go up strong and full on the 
opening word and down soft and sensuous on 
the “Marguerite.” He was on his way to lunch 
at the chateau wfith its American owner, Marma- 
duke Wood. 

Monsieur Wood had servants and a cellar and 
he sat tight with them in spite of the advancing 
Prussians. 

For all his joyous aspect the Captain of Artil¬ 
lery was very much disturbed. Some one in this 
village was in communication with the German 
lines. He had tested the thing out, and he knew. 
Every time he moved his battery under cover of 
the high ground, the enemy immediately changed 
its fire. There was no Taube about. Some one 
signaled the range, that was the long and short 
of it. He had sent word to the war department 
in Paris and asked for a secret agent. But he 
watched himself as he swung along through the 
village. 

A peasant cobbling a shoe sat on a bench before 
a shop. Above his head, against the wall in the 
sun, a bullfinch hung in a wooden cage. The 
peasant was about sixty, as the Captain had 
noticed more than once, but he was hale and 
strong, and he wondered why it was, that in 
France’s desperate need he was not somewhere 
in the service. 

The officer stopped and dismissed his refrain 

137 






Monsieur Jonquelle 



with a kiss blown from the tips of his fingers into 
the sky. 

“Old man,” he said, “why don’t you get a gun 

and fight the Germans?” 

The peasant put down the piece of leather that 

he was stitching to the shoe and looked up at the 
Captain of Artillery. His face was expressionless 

and stolid. 

“It would be of no use,” he said. 

“Of no use!” echoed the Captain. “How do 

you know it would be of no use? 

“Well, Monsieur,” replied the peasant, “who 

should know it better than I?” 

At this moment the bullfinch, in its wooden 
cage, touched by the sun began to whistle a tune. 
The Captain of Artillery started, listened, and as 
he listened, gradually drew himself up until he 
was a rigid military figure. The bird paused, 
omitted portions of the tune, and repeated his 
notes. 

The Captain, standing as though enchanted 
into bronze, made suddenly a belligerent gesture 
as of one driving a short sword upward. 

“Diable,” he said, and he went on with a quick 
military stride. 

At the red brick wall of the chateau, where the 
gate entered, he gave a word to the sentry and 
went in. It was past noon and the Captain was 
shown at once into the dining room. 

138 



Bluchers March 


It was a big, airy room on the second floor, 
lined with windows. The table was laid with a 
splendid cloth to the floor. There were flowers 
in a great bowl, and the westering sun entered. 
A shutter had been set to shade it from the table. 

It was a table laid precisely as one would lay 
it in a time of peace in a villa on the Riviera. The 
war might have been in the moon or read out of 
a fairy book, for all the quiet elegance of this 
brilliant sunlit room. 

For the second time on this afternoon the Cap¬ 
tain of Artillery had a distinct surprise. The 
table was laid for three and two men already sat 
with their legs under it. The host, Mr. Marma- 
duke Wood, and a tall gray man, in an English 
tweed. 

They had a bottle of champagne and they dis¬ 
cussed the arias of the opera like men who knew 
all the songs in the world. 

There was evidence of more than one bottle 
poured out in this talk. The American had his 
head, although his face was a trifle purpled, but 
the wine had gotten a certain hold upon the 
stranger. He got up a bit unsteadily when the 
host arose; he bowed and addressed the officer. 

“I am the secret agent you sent for,” he said. 
“I have a lot of names; Cordon Rouge will do as 
well as any,” and he laughed in a queer high note. 

Then he put his hand into his pocket, took out 

139 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


a leather wallet and fumbling among the docu¬ 
ments it held, handed the astonished Captain a 
piece of paper. It was a line in the official cipher 

from the war department. . n , 

“We send you the best man in France, it said, 

over a signature. 

The amazed Provengal returned the paper and 
Monsieur Cordon Rouge replaced it in his wallet. 
The Captain of Artillery had cause, he thought, 
for this amazement. A secret agent, who made 
neither himself nor his mission any secret, and 
was named, quite fittingly it seemed, for a wine 
of France, was something new to him. 

“Monsieur,” added the agent with a gesture, 
“let us have no secrets from our host. I owe him 
that, since my admission to his table was perhaps 
a trifle upon faith. I said, Monsieur, that I came 
as your friend and guest; and he received me to 
his courtesy upon that introduction. 

He swung about with a conscious gesture, the 

gesture of a man in pride. 

“Monsieur Marmaduke Wood,” he added, 
“some one is signaling the position of the French 
artillery to the German lines. The Captain here 
has sent to Paris for a secret agent, and Mon¬ 
sieur”—he paused, thrust his hand into the bosom 
of his waistcoat, and bowed in a genial fashion 

“I am come to find him.” 

140 




Blue her s March 


The American smiled and drew out a chair for 
the Captain of Artillery. 

“I am honored to receive Monsieur Cordon 
Rouge,” he said, “even upon his own recogni¬ 
zance.” 

The manners of the American were excellent 
even if he had come up from the stockyards in 
Chicago as he freely said. He had very nearly 
a continental address. It was the wonder of the 
world how these middle-class Americans took on 
the veneer of Europe. This Illinois packer was 
not over-dressed. He had trained himself almost 
into a military figure, with his close-cropped hair 
to hide the gray of one in the afternoon of life. 
Mobile, the Captain thought, these rich men from 
beyond the sea; a French bourgeois grown rich 
could not thus take on at middle sixty the manners 
of a baron. 

The Provencal sat down to the excellent lunch, 
but his blood was hot. This creature had the 
impudence of Satan, to ring a bell and say that 
he was the friend and guest of Henri Alphonse 
Marie of Tarascon, a Captain of Artillery in the 
armies of the republic. There should be a word 
aside for this. . . . And with this glib assurance 
to force his way in to the host’s table! The inso¬ 
lence of it was not to be endured. 

“Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” he said over his 
pigeon, “it is perhaps the privilege of the Depart- 

141 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


ment of War in Paris to select my guests, but I 
have an unreasonable habit of choosing my friends 
for myself.” 

The agent put down his fork and looked the 
Captain in the face. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “your habit is unwise, and 
I beg you to abandon it—a friend is a gift of 
God.” 

“I shall be charmed to discuss that with you, 
Monsieur,” replied the Captain, his face flushed, 
“when your mission here is ended. There is a 
bit of turf behind the chateau.” 

The agent drew a parallelogram on the cloth 

with the handle of his fork. 

“How much turf, Monsieur?” he said. 

“Enough,” replied the Captain, “to kill a man 

on.” 

The agent fingered the stem of his glass. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “a man may be killed on 
a very little ground but one must have six feet 
of turf to bury him under.” 

“There is also enough for that,” replied the 
Captain, “do you undertake, Monsieur, to pro¬ 
vide a dead man.” 

“I do,” replied the agent. 

“Now that,” said the Captain of Artillery, “is 
entirely satisfactory, except, Monsieur, that the 
element of time remains a bit vague. Shall we 
say,” and he paused, “that Monsieur Cordon 

142 





Bluchers March 


Rouge will provide this dead man within two 
hours after his mission here is ended.” 

The agent leered over the table. 

“Within two hours after this luncheon is ended, 
Monsieur. My mission, as you name it, is already 
ended.” 

The Captain of Artillery appeared to be aston¬ 
ished. 

“You mean,” he said, “that you know who is in 
communication with the German lines?” 

“I do,” replied the agent. 

“The very man?” 

The agent looked hard at the Captain across 
the table. 

“The very man!” he said. 

The Captain of Artillery, to the eye, was not 
disconcerted. 

“Perhaps, Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” he said, 
“you will tell us when precisely you solved this 
problem.” 

“With pleasure,” replied the agent; “when I 
walked in the village this morning.” 

“And what did you see, Monsieur Cordon 
Rouge, when you walked in the village?” 

“Now, Monsieur,” replied the agent, “one man 
may see one thing and another man another, when 
he walks in a village. . . . Also, Monsieur, one 
may see a number of things, if he stands at a win¬ 
dow and looks down into a village. 

143 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


“As, for example, Monsieur, half an hour ago 
when I stood at the window yonder, I saw Henri 
Alphonse Marie, of Tarascon, advancing in the 
road. He is a Captain of Artillery in the armies 
of the republic, and yet, Monsieur, he sings a 
roundelay the refrain of which runs in his own 
language: 

*‘ f Ah! quelle est belle La Marguerite! J 

“And yet, Monsieur, mark you this, that ballad 
is not a song of France. It is a song of another 
nation, Monsieur. Observe, Monsieur;” and he 
began to sing in English: 

“Gold on her head, and gold on her feet, 

And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet, 

And a golden girdle round my sweet;— 

Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite.” 

His glass went up and his voice bellowed the 
refrain. 

“Observe, Monsieur,” he added, that I did 
not stop, stare, and fall into a military attitude 
with astonishment at hearing a soldier in France 
sing a song of another nation! 

“And why should you, Monsieur ? said the 

Captain with composure. 

“And why not, Monsieur,” continued the agent, 
“since Henri Alphonse Marie of Tarascon, a Cap¬ 
tain of Artillery, did so stop, stare, and fall into 

144 







Bluchers March 


a military attitude at hearing a bird in a cage 
whistling a foreign tune.” 

“But, Monsieur,” cried the Captain, “did you 
hear that tune—it was Bliicher’s March!” 

The American, who began to be uneasy for the 
peace of his guests, now politely interfered. 

“Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” he said with a 
courteous bow from the hips, “is there not a con¬ 
siderable difference in these two cases? France is 
not at war with England but allied with her. We 
are not concerned to hear an English song sung in 
a French village. But to hear a martial tune of 
the German Empire whistled in a French village 
at this time, must, I admit, surprise one. The 
German advance has not reached this village. 
Captain Marie must be permitted some astonish¬ 
ment. Whence came this bullfinch, and how, 
Monsieur, did he manage to hear Bliicher’s 
March in a French village? . . . And especially, 
Monsieur, would Captain Marie be all the more 
concerned since the presence of a spy somewhere 
about is clearly indicated by the German fire.” 

He paused and turned to his guest from Taras- 
con. 

“Captain Marie,” he continued, “may I inquire 
who it is in the village that possesses this extraor¬ 
dinary bird? I must confess to sharing with you 
a certain astonishment.” 

“The shoemaker,” replied the Captain. 

145 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


“Then, gentlemen,” continued the American, 
“let us by all means have this shoemaker here with 
his bullfinch and inquire into this affair?” 

The Captain wrote an order and the host sent 
it out. But the secret agent seemed not altogether 
pleased. 

“Monsieur,” he said, addressing the Captain 
of Artillery, “how do you know that this bird 
is whistling Bliicher’s March?” 

“I have heard it on several days,” said the Cap¬ 
tain dryly. 

“Then you knew before to-day that it whistled 
this march?” 

“No,” replied the Captain, “I did not. I heard 
the bird behind the shop, and in certain parts of 
the cottage, but never until to-day before the door. 
That is to say, my attention was never before suf¬ 
ficiently directed to this bullfinch to determine the 
tune he whistled.” 

“And how did you determine it to-day?” said 
the secret agent. 

“Monsieur,” cried the Captain, “I know that 
tune when I hear it.” 

“Are you certain?” returned the agent. 

He leaned back in his chair and began to whis¬ 
tle. His foot beating time moved out from under 
the cover of the tablecloth. He gave the tune pre¬ 
cisely as the bullfinch had given it in the sun before 
the shoemaker’s door. He hesitated and repeated 

146 





Bluchers March 


but he could not whistle the march to its end. 

“Diable!” he said, “what are the notes I omit?” 

“Alas, Monsieur,” replied the American, “I 
cannot help you out. I never heard the portions 
of this tune that you omit,” and he ran the notes 
that the agent had given in a lower key. 

The agent’s foot under the martial air beat 
heavily on the floor. And suddenly the Captain 
of Artillery observed a thing that flooded him 
with light. The agent’s shoes were not alike, one 
of them was a sabot, and he remembered that the 
shoe the old peasant stitched was leather! 

At this moment the sentry brought in the shoe¬ 
maker and the bullfinch in its wooden cage. 

Before any one could speak, the agent ad¬ 
dressed him in a tone of menace. 

“Answer what you are asked,” he said. 

One could not tell whether it was a threat upon 
the old peasant to be frank or to be cunning; to 
say all he knew, or to answer every interrogation 
with deliberate care. Then he made a gesture 
as of one abandoning the witness to the Captain 
of Artillery. 

The officer turned about in his chair. 

“This bird,” he said, indicating the bullfinch 
with his finger, “whistles Bliicher’s March.” 

“Yes, Monsieur,” replied the peasant. 

“That is a German tune.” 

“Yes, Monsieur.” 


147 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


“Who taught him?” 

“I taught him, Monsieur.” 

“Then you are a German!” said the Captain of 
Artillery. 

“No, Monsieur,” replied the peasant, “I am a 
Frenchman from the Province of the Jura.” 

The agent interrupted. “I can vouch for that,” 
he said. 

“Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” replied the Cap¬ 
tain of Artillery, “I shall be obliged if you do not 
interrupt me. In spite of your commission I am 
determined to look a little into this affair for my¬ 
self.” 

“Oh, by all means,” returned the agent, “but 
I beg you to remember, Monsieur, that one does 
not become a German merely because one knows a 
German tune.” 

For a moment the Captain did not go on. He 
sat looking at the peasant. The sun lay about 
the floor. Outside the great artillery duel went 
on booming over the chateau. 

Presently the Captain continued his examina¬ 
tion. 

“Before your shop to-day,” he went on, “you 
said it was of no use to resist the Germans. That 
seemed a strange expression, Monsieur, and I 
inquired how you knew that it was of no use. You 
replied with a still stranger expression, ‘Who 

148 





Bluchers March 


should know it better than I?’ These were suspi¬ 
cious words, Monsieur; what do they mean?” 

The old man looked about. He carried some¬ 
thing under his arm wrapped in paper. He put 
it now into his blouse. Then he began to speak 
slowly and with repetition. 

“Well, Monsieur, who should know better than 
I that it is of no use to fight the Germans? Did 
I not try it, Monsieur, in 1870 ... I and 
my six brothers at Weissenburg? My brothers, 
they were shot to death, and I, Monsieur, was 
taken to a village far up . . . where there are 
forests in the sky. And there, Monsieur, a thing 
happened that taught me to hate the Germans. 

. . . But to hate them, Monsieur, as an animal 
hates the fire. To hate them with a knowledge 
that one cannot harm them. 

“I always remember it, Monsieur, day and 
night. The death of my brothers, . . . that was 
war. But I was a boy then, Monsieur, and proud. 
I was a Frenchman, Monsieur. It was the shame 
they put on me that I will remember always. I 
used to say, with tears, Monsieur: ‘Jules . . . 
Jules Martain, you are made a shame to France. 
You ought to die. You ought to have the will 
to die.’ But I could not do it. One may starve 
to death, Monsieur, yes, if he is lost in the moun¬ 
tains, or if he sees no bread. But with the loaf 
before him—he cannot. ... I know, Monsieur, 

149 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


one may believe he can. One may think he has 
the will to die. But it is not in nature, Monsieur. 
He will endure the shame and eat the bread of 
shame.” 

And he began to ramble on, adding one com¬ 
ment upon another, as though the end of the story 
had escaped him. 

The secret agent sat with his eyes half closed. 
The American was watching the peasant with at¬ 
tention. The Captain of Artillery brought him 
up : 

“Come, Monsieur,” he said, “what is this ex¬ 
traordinary story?” 

The peasant went on then. 

“The prison was on the public square. There 
was a window with bars. . . . Yes, Monsieur, 
they could have put the food in at the door, but 
no; the Junker Lieutenant must have his sport. 
Soon everybody came to listen and to laugh, Mon¬ 
sieur; to hold one’s sides with laughter. ... A 
French prisoner whistling Bliicher’s March for a 
loaf of bread. . . . No, Monsieur, I did not 
know what the tune was in the beginning. I whis¬ 
tled only the notes the Junker Lieutenant whis¬ 
tled. . . . Bah!” 

And forgetting where he was, the peasant spat 
violently on the floor. Then he looked curiously 
from one of the three men to the others. 

“Ah, yes,” he continued, “a man grows old and 

150 





Bluchers March 


strange. And so, Monsieur, I keep a German 
bullfinch in a cage, and I teach him to whistle Blii- 
cher’s March for a crust of bread. . . . 

“Try him, Monsieur, it is the truth I speak.” 

The Captain of Artillery broke off a piece of 
bread and extended it toward the cage. 

Immediately the bird began. It paused, hesi¬ 
tated and repeated the notes, as the Captain had 
observed it to do in the street. But now he 
noticed with astonishment that the notes omitted 
were precisely the ones which Monsieur Cordon 
Rouge had himself omitted a few moments be¬ 
fore, and that the bird paused and repeated pre¬ 
cisely as the secret agent had done. The perform¬ 
ances were identical to a note. 

The American too was astounded. But the 
Captain of Artillery for all his southern blood 
had himself in hand. 

“One thing more, Monsieur,” he said to the 
peasant, “why is it, if you please, that I have ob¬ 
served the bullfinch to be whistling sometimes in 
one part of your cottage and sometimes in an¬ 
other?” 

“Ah, Monsieur,” replied the old man imme¬ 
diately, “it is the sun. He is a happier prisoner 
than I was, this German bird. He will sing, Mon¬ 
sieur, when the sun enters his cage.” 

Then as though he suddenly remembered the 

151 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


parcel in his blouse, he took it out and handed it 
to the secret agent. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “I have brought your 
shoe.” 

The man met the unexpected with composure. 

“Mercie,” he said, “I am not accustomed to a 
sabot,” and he put on the shoe. 

Then he stood up. 

“Monsieur le Captain,” he said, “shall we 
shoot this peasant for a spy?” 

The officer looked him in the face. 

“I think not,” he said. 

“Reflect, Monsieur,” continued the agent, “he 
is found with a German bird that whistles a Ger¬ 
man tune in a French village.” 

“I think,” replied the Captain with delibera¬ 
tion, “that it is not this peasant that is signaling 
to the German lines.” 

“It is another, perhaps?” inquired the agent. 

“Perhaps,” replied the Captain. 

“The German bird, Monsieur?” 

“I am convinced, Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” 
said the officer with sarcasm, “that the German 
bird has nothing to do with the German fire.” 

“Then, Monsieur,” cried the secret agent, “be 
prepared for the surprise of your career.” 

He took the cage and carried it to the window 
facing the German lines. He moved the shutter 
back so that the sun fell on the cage. Immedi- 

152 





Bluchers March 


ately, as the peasant had affirmed, the bullfinch 
began to whistle. Then presently a strange thing 
happened, the German fire ceased, there was a 
period of silence, and as the bird finished, it began 
with redoubled fury. 

“Captain Marie,” cried the agent, his voice 
ringing, “where do the German shells fall now?” 

The officer sprang to the eastern windows over¬ 
looking the French guns, a moment he searched 
the country with his field glasses. Then he swore 
a great oath. 

“Nom de chien!” he cried; “they fall a hundred 
meters beyond us, in the edge of the wood.” 

The agent brought the bullfinch back to the 
table and set it down. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “there is a great man in 
France who tells us that chance in the ultimate 
instance is God. I have reflected upon that and 
I approach his opinion. But for the barb of a 
wire that cut my shoe this morning, I should not 
have stopped at this peasant’s cottage, and so I 
should not have observed this bird, I should not 
have learned this peasant’s extraordinary story, 
and I should not have been present here at a curi¬ 
ous adjustment of God’s providence.” 

“Extraordinary story!” cried the Captain. “It 
is a tissue of lies. The man is a Prussian spy.” 

The Captain’s face was purple with excitement. 

153 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


The American sat unmoving like one in the pres¬ 
ence of things unreal. 

“No, Monsieur,” replied the agent, his voice 
calm, the evidence of wine gone out, “and that is 
one of the strange things about this business, the 
peasant’s story is true. He was held a prisoner 
in a mountain village of Baden as he says. . . . 
We have some report of it. That is to say, Mon¬ 
sieur, we have certain pieces alone and discon¬ 
nected, but we could not have put them together 
except for the inscrutable moving of this chance 
which is God. 

“And now, Monsieur, will you court-martial 
the German bullfinch?” 

“Monsieur,” replied the officer, “I do not pre¬ 
tend to understand you, but I do understand that 
by some means the German lines are signaled by 
this bird which I find in this peasant’s possession. 
I shall not bother to unravel the mystery. I shall 
wring the bird’s neck and put the peasant before 
a firing squad.” 

“A moment, Monsieur,” continued the agent 
with authority. “A little while ago I promised 
that you should have a dead man for your bit of 
turf. But I did not promise that you should select 
him. I think, Monsieur, that I distinctly said that 
I would select him—that I would provide you 
with a dead man . . . and so I shall, Monsieur.” 

154 





Bluchers March 


But the Captain of Artillery had the insistence 
of his discipline. 

“Monsieur Cordon Rouge, or whatever your 
name may be,” he said, “I am willing to accept 
you as one in the secret service of France, if you 
like, but I am not willing to accept you for the 
military authority in this village. 1 * 

And he got up. But he was interrupted. The 
American, who had been altogether silent, arose. 
His face was like plaster but he maintained his 
irreproachable manners. He bowed from the 
hips, clicking his heels together. 

“Permit me to select the dead man!” he said. 

And he whipped an automatic pistol out of his 
pocket. But before he could make his sinister 
choice, the lingers of the secret agent seized his 
hand and doubled it back with a snap against the 
wrist. The weapon exploded, and the American 
slipped down in a heap on the floor. 

“Mon Dieu!” cried the Captain of Artillery, 
“you have killed an American gentleman!” 

“No, Monsieur,” replied the secret agent, “I 
have merely killed a gentleman who was not able 
to whistle all of Bliicher’s March.” 

“Diable!” cried the officer, putting out his 
hands in a hopeless gesture, “how does this Blu- 
cher’s March signal the German lines?” 

“Monsieur,” said the secret agent, “it does not 
signal them at all. Your host signaled them by 

155 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


the simple device of opening and closing the shut¬ 
ter to his window. ... I observed this, Mon¬ 
sieur, when I passed through the village this morn¬ 
ing. Closed, the window shutter meant your bat¬ 
teries were advanced; opened, it meant they were 
retired. The Germans had only to watch that 
shutter with a mariner’s glass.” 

“Monsieur,” said the Captain of Artillery, in 
a sort of wonder, “who is this dead man and who 
are you?” 

“I can answer that,” said the old peasant, tak¬ 
ing up his bullfinch from the table as though no 
event of importance had occurred, “the dead man 
is the Junker Lieutenant who shamed me, and the 
other is Monsieur Jonquelle, the Prefect of Police 
of Paris.” 






VII .—The Woman on the Terrace 

Monsieur Jonquelle, the Prefect of Police 
of Paris, was a moment late. 

An angry voice reached him at the turn of the 
path. It was a tense, low, menacing voice. The 
words were not clear, but the intent in the voice 
was unmistakable. For a mere fraction of time 
he remained motionless as in some indecision; then 
he went forward swiftly. 

It was evening. The soft colors of a sort of 
twilight day were on the Mediterranean. The 
many-colored city of Nice was lying below the 
mountain of olive-trees and the tropical gardens 
of the villas of Cimiez. The whole scene was 
from a country of the fairy; the romantic frontier 
of some kingdom of wonder legend. 

There were two persons on the long terrace of 
the villa when Monsieur Jonquelle approached. 
The villa was small and exquisite—a sort of jewel- 
box hidden in a garden of tropical luxuriance, in¬ 
closed by a high wall surmounted by a tile border. 
The villa was rose color. The tiles of the terrace 
and the border of the high wall were also rose 

157 


Monsieur Jonquelle 


color. It was a dainty and sensuous bit of the 
world, as though raised by some enchantment out 
of the baked earth of Arabia. 

Monsieur Jonquelle interrupted a tragic 

moment. 

A woman sat in a chair midway of this terrace. 
It was one of those beautiful invalid-chairs made 
for the out-of-doors by that Italian genius which 
seeks always to add beauty to the decorative as¬ 
pect of a garden. The chair was white. The 
gown of the woman in it was blue; it looked black 
in the soft evening light and against the rose- 
colored villa and the white chair. 

The woman did not move. Her small, shapely 
head, as from fatigue, rested against the high 
back of the chair. It was crowned with a great 
weight of hair, as yellow and as heavy as gold, 
built up into a wonderful coiffure that resembled 
in its vague outlines the helmet of Minerva. Her 
hands and her elbows lay on the arms of the chair. 
Beside her, a step beyond, the man who had ar¬ 
rived a moment before Monsieur Jonquelle stood 
in an attitude of menace. The visible personality 
of the man was puzzling. That he was an Ameri¬ 
can one could instantly see. But one could not so 
easily determine his status or his habits of life. 
He had some of the physical characteristics, some 
of the tricks of dress of one engaged in an artistic 
vocation; some of the swift, accurate, precise ges- 

158 




The IV oman on the T err ace 


tures of one skilled in the plastic arts. But there 
was a vigor and determination about the man that 
one is not accustomed to find in a mere artist—an 
element of ruthless decision, and of swift acts as 
of one accustomed to peril in his trade. 

The attitude of the man and the voice that had 
reached Monsieur Jonquelle at the turn of the 
path were unmistakable in their menace. But the 
woman did not move. Neither the sudden ap¬ 
pearance of the man, nor his words, nor his men¬ 
acing gesture had in any respect disturbed her 
equanimity. 

The scene changed as at the snap of invisible 
fingers. And Monsieur Jonquelle came up on to 
the terrace. The man fell into the posture of one 
at ease before an interrupting visitor, and the 
woman looked up languidly as though undis¬ 
turbed; as though no human drama, however 
tragic, could disturb her; as though she were for¬ 
ever beyond the stimulus of any human emotion. 

It was clear that the man had no knowledge of 
Monsieur Jonquelle, but to the woman he was evi¬ 
dently a familiar figure. His appearance must 
have been an immense surprise to her, as the ap¬ 
pearance of the man beyond her had been, but 
there was no evidence of it in her voice. 

She did not rise. But she spoke softly. 

“You do me a conspicuous honor,” she said. 

159 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


“You will have been very much concerned about 
me to search me out here.” 

Then she presented the man beyond her. 

“Martin Dillard,” she said, “an American— 
Monsieur Jonquelle.” 

The Frenchman and also the woman, one 
thought, observed the American closely to note 
any recognition of either the name or the appear¬ 
ance of the new arrival. But there was none. He 
did not know either Monsieur Jonquelle or his 
trade. 

She touched a bell concealed somewhere in the 
arm of the chair. A maid appeared. An added 
direction brought two chairs. The American sat 
down where he was, but Monsieur Jonquelle car¬ 
ried his chair a little beyond the woman to the 
edge of the terrace. He put down his hat, his 
stick, and his gloves. 

“I am fortunate to find you,” he said; “I hoped 
to arrive a moment earlier.” 

The woman smiled. 

“In that event,” she said, “you might have 
failed to find my friend, Martin Dillard, the 
American. You will be interested, I am sure, to 
meet him and to know why he is angry.” 

She turned slightly toward the American. Her 
face in the soft light seemed smiling, but it was, 
in fact, inscrutable. 

“Monsieur Jonquelle,” she explained, “is an 

160 






The Woman on the Terrace 


old acquaintance—a very old acquaintance. I 
have no secrets from him. He will know, I am 
sure, precisely the reason for my flight here and 
your cause of anger against me.” 

She turned again toward the Frenchman. 

“Is it not so, Monsieur?” 

The American had a strange, sullen, puzzled 
expression. But Monsieur Jonquelle laughed. 

“Alas!” he said, “it is the disasters of my ac¬ 
quaintances with which I seem always to be con¬ 
cerned, and, unhappily, their affairs are usually 
known to me.” 

He bowed slightly to the American. 

“If Monsieur will permit,” he said, “I shall be 
charmed to verify Madame’s prediction. Mon¬ 
sieur has followed to inquire why the house in the 
Faubourg St. Germain, in the old quarter of Paris, 
happened to burn down.” 

The American moved, as in anger, abruptly in 
his chair. 

“Yes,” he said, “that is just precisely what I 
wanted to know.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle rose. He took a cigarette 
case from his pocket. It was of platinum exqui¬ 
sitely traced with a complicated arabesque. He 
opened it and presented it to the woman in the 
chair. She declined. 

“It is denied me,” she said, “as all things are 
now denied me.” 


161 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

The American also refused, and Monsieur Jon¬ 
quelle returned with his cigarette to his chair on 
the border of the terrace. 

“I, also,” he said, speaking as he went about 
the lighting of the cigarette, “as what Madame 
has so courteously called ‘an old acquaintance/ 
am interested to know why this house at the 
corner of the Rue de St. Pere on the Faubourg 
St. Germain has burned to the ground. It will be 
necessary to make some explanation to the au¬ 
thorities of Paris. They will be curious about it. 
And as this old acquaintance of Madame it has 
seemed to me that I ought to obtain and take some 
measures to present an explanation to the authori¬ 
ties in Paris.” 

He continued to speak, in the slow business of 
igniting the cigarette. 

“There is no question of insurance, nor the 
right of any property owner in the matter. Mon¬ 
sieur Martin Dillard owned this house by pur¬ 
chase some months ago, He carried no insurance 
on it. It was stored only with his own property 
and used only by himself with the charming assist¬ 
ance of Madame. There was not even a servant 
about. The doors entering the house were all 
fitted with a special lock, a complicated American 
lock with two keys only, one for Monsieur and the 
duplicate for Madame. The windows were se¬ 
curely closed with heavy shutters. The house was 

162 





The Woman on the Terrace 


wholly inaccessible to any but these two persons, 
and it was the exclusive property of Monsieur. 
If it had not burned, we should not have been con¬ 
cerned about it. Mysterious romances of the 
heart do not provoke an inquiry in Paris. It is the 
only capital of pleasure where the heart is free; 
but the city authorities are concerned with fires. 
When the flame emerges from the heart, Paris 
is disturbed, and when it reduces to ashes an 
ancient house on the Faubourg St. Germain, some 
explanation must be given.” 

He paused again. He had now gotten the 
cigarette lighted. And he sat down. 

“Madame has correctly expressed it. 1 am an 
old acquaintance, and I am more than that; I am 
an old acquaintance who is very much interested 
to get Madame’s explanation before the authori¬ 
ties in Paris as early as I can manage it. Her 
flight after the fire seemed to be unwise. Even I 
had very considerable difficulty to find her.” 

The American spoke abruptly. 

“You seem very much interested in ‘Casque 
d’Or.’ ” 

Jonquelle’s voice was in a sort of drawl. 

“ ‘Casque d’Or/ ” he said. “The expression is 
supremely happy. Madame’s golden head used to 
be the wonder of Paris when she came up with it 
like a Minerva through the fluid floor of Paris. 
Ah I yes, I am very interested—I have been always 

163 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


interested, as an old, a very old, acquaintance. 
And I am interested again, more, perhaps, than 
Monsieur can imagine.” 

The American spoke again abruptly. 

“You seem to know all about ‘Casque d’Or.’ ” 

Again Monsieur Jonquelle drawled his answer. 

“Ah I yes,” he said, “from her golden head to 
the blue pigeon delicately outlined on her hand 
between the thumb and the forefinger—every de¬ 
tail of Madame has been of interest to me—has 
been, I may say, of anxiety to me. And now I am 
concerned about the explanation for this fire.” 

The American broke in. His voice was no 
longer restrained. 

“I don’t see what you’ve got to do with it,” he 
said. 

Monsieur Jonquelle did not at once reply. He 
looked at his cigarette as though it were somehow 
unsatisfactory; puffed it a moment until the tip 
glowed; then he tossed it over the edge of the 
terrace into the bushes. 

Almost immediately the bushes parted and two 
persons came up on to the terrace. They were 
footmen in a rather conspicuous foreign livery. 
They paid no attention to either Monsieur Jon¬ 
quelle or the American. They addressed them¬ 
selves with apologetic diffidence to the woman in 
the chair. They explained that a parrot belonging 
to the Princess Kitzenzof, who occupied the great 

164 




T he Woman on the T err ace 


villa above, had escaped and was concealed some¬ 
where in the thick shrubbery of Madame’s gar¬ 
den. Would they be permitted to search for it? 
The woman in the chair moved her head slowly in 
assent. Then she dismissed them with a gesture. 
They went down off the terrace and toward the 
rear of the villa in their search, and the woman in 
the chair addressed the American. 

“You must believe,” she said, “that Monsieur 
Jonquelle is an old acquaintance and that this ex¬ 
planation is not to be denied him. Neither are 
you to be denied it. You came here for it pre¬ 
cisely as he has come for it. You have followed 
me here, trailing out my flight, as he has followed. 
The two of you arrived nearly on the moment, and 
I shall be pleased to include the two of you in my 
explanation. You were demanding it as Monsieur 
Jonquelle arrived—with some heat, if I correctly 
remember.” 

The American replied in his abrupt manner. 

“I don’t understand this thing,” he said. “But 
I do want to know how this house happened to 
burn while I was absent. You are the only person 
who had a key to it, and you must have burned it 
or you would not have run away and hid yourself 
—now, what’s the story?” 

The woman had a bit of delicate lace in her 
fingers. She put it up a moment to her lips. Then 
she spoke, addressing her two guests. Her voice 

165 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


was slow, serene, and detached, like one who 
speaks without interest, without emotion, and 
without any concern for effect. It was like a voice 
from a mechanical appliance, having intelligence, 
but no will to feel. 

“I have been attached to Monsieur Dillard,” 
she said. “There was a fortune before us, an 
immense, incredible fortune. The anticipation of 
it bound me to him, and so the burning of this 
house must have been an accident. The lure of 
a fortune is the only influence that does not loosen 
as one advances into life, in a world where pres¬ 
ently every emotion fails. Therefore Monsieur 
Dillard had a right to feel that he could trust me, 
since my interest in this fortune was identical with 
his own.” 

She paused, and seemed to address Monsieur 
Jonquelle directly. 

“You will be concerned, Monsieur, about the 
mystery of this fortune. It was no dream, and 
depended upon no uncertain hazard of chance. 
Monsieur Dillard is an artist—an artist with a 
genius for turning art to a practical use. There 
have been greater artists than Monsieur Dillard 
in production, but not in methods by which art 
can be made to serve a practical purpose; that is 
to say, can be made to produce a fortune. It is 
the life-work of Monsieur Dillard not to produce 
art, but to bring the artistic skill of the masters 

166 






The Woman on the Terrace 


of art to his practical purposes. And, in this de¬ 
partment, he has no superior in any country. The 
house in the Faubourg St. Germain was in fact a 
storeroom. It was, at the time of its destruction 
by fire, literally packed with masterpieces—beauti¬ 
ful works of art of an incredible value.” 

She did not move the position of her body in 
the chair. But she again vaguely touched her lips 
with the handkerchief in her fingers, a bit of filmy 
lace. 

“Monsieur,” she said, “there have been in the 
world three men who are supreme in what is per¬ 
haps the highest of all artistic production. I shall 
name them to you: Monsieur Whistler, the Ameri¬ 
can; Monsieur Helleu of Paris, and Wagenheim 
of Munich.” 

She moved a trifle in her chair. Then she went 
on. 

“The misfortune of producing a masterpiece 
in oil or in water-color is that one copy only of 
this masterpiece exists, and if by any misfortune 
it is destroyed, every adequate evidence of its 
beauty has disappeared forever. This is the un¬ 
fortunate feature attached to the work of all the 
great masters. But it is a misfortune that does 
not attend the etchings of Monsieur Whistler, 
Monsieur Helleu, and Herr Wagenheim. The 
beautiful faces of the lovely Americans pre¬ 
served by the etchings of Monsieur Helleu can be 

167 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

reproduced in any number. That beauty does not 
depend upon the jeopardy of a single picture.” 

Her voice seemed to advance, but not with the 
stimulus of any emotion. 

“It is not commonly known,” she said, “that 
an extreme skill is required to obtain in the prints 
all the beauties of these etchings. The prints are 
commonly made by persons having only the usual 
workman’s skill. But it was always realized by 
the masters of this art that the extreme and deli¬ 
cate beauties of their etchings could only be pro¬ 
duced by an adequate skill, by a skill almost equal 
to their own, in the printing of the picture. This 
skill constitutes the peculiar genius of Monsieur 
Dillard—a skill which he has striven to perfect, 
and which he has finally brought to the highest 
excellence. 

“He labored in the house in the Faubourg St. 
Germain for a long time and with an incredible 
patience, until he became the superior of any man 
living, and the house, as I have said, was literally 
packed with the most beautiful and the most valu¬ 
able reproductions of this character in the world. 
This accumulated treasure represented the in¬ 
credible fortune which was before Monsieur Dil¬ 
lard and myself. 

“It was on the night that he had gone to Bor¬ 
deaux in order to make some arrangement for the 
removal of the treasure that the unfortunate fire 

168 





The Woman on the Terrace 


occurred that wiped out our fortune in an hour, 
leaving Monsieur penniless and myself with but 
the ruin of another illusion. And it happened, 
Monsieur, in the simplest fashion.” 

There was absolute silence on the terrace before 
the villa. The vaguely blue sea seemed to under¬ 
lie a world of amethyst. Heavy odors were in the 
air. A little beyond the terrace the leaves of a 
flowering vine moved where the footmen of the 
Princess Kitzenzof searched as noiselessly as 
ghosts for the lost parrot. The shadowy figures 
of the two footmen were outlined to the woman 
in the chair, and, perhaps, to Monsieur Jonquelle, 
but they were not visible to the American. 

He sat like a tense figure in some organic me¬ 
dium, grim, rigid; always in that immobility which 
seemed to await the next word before it flashed 
into violent life; as though Madame’s words were 
the delicate implement of a vivisectionist moving 
about a nerve which it never touched, but which 
it constantly menaced. 

“It was the simplest accident,” the woman re¬ 
peated in her placid voice. “The original etchings 
of an immortal like one of the three which I have 
named are priceless—they cannot be replaced. 

“Out of the fear that the house might be en¬ 
tered, after the reproductions had been made, 
these originals were placed under some rubbish 
in the basement of the house. This basement had 

169 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


not been entered for a long time, and when these 
originals were concealed there, care was taken not 
to disturb the appearance which this room pre¬ 
sented of not having been opened for an incredible 
age. 

“It was low, with an earth floor. The ceiling 
was of wooden beams dried out and beginning to 
decay and as inflammable as tinder. The whole 
of this ceiling was hung with cobwebs, laced over 
them, hanging like veils in shreds. 

“On the night of the disaster, before leaving 
the house, I went into this basement to make sure 
that the originals stored there remained as we 
had placed them. It was late, and I took a candle. 
This was a fatal indiscretion. When I arose from 
an examination of the place where the etchings 
were concealed, the flame of the candle came in 
contact with the hanging spider-webs, and imme¬ 
diately the whole ceiling flashed into flame. In 
an instant it seemed to me the entire ceiling of the 
room was on fire. I had barely time to escape 
before the room was a furnace. 

“In terror, I let myself out of the house. As 
the basement of this house was without windows, 
the fire was not discovered until I had gotten en¬ 
tirely out of the neighborhood of the Faubourg 
St. Germain. 

“I was so overcome, so numbed by this incredi¬ 
ble disaster that I did not stop to consider any 

170 







The Woman on the Terrace 


result. I wished to escape from Paris—to conceal 
myself somewhere. I thought of this villa, but I 
did not dare to take the train from the Gare de 
Lyon. I traveled in a motor, winding southward 
from France, not directly, in order to confuse any 
one who might endeavor to follow.” 

Again she touched her mouth with the lace 
handkerchief. There was a faint red stain on it. 
She looked at the stain, but without emotion, and 
presently added: 

“But I did not succeed. Monsieur Dillard and 
Monsieur Jonquelle have been able to trail me 
here with an equal facility, it seems, and within 
almost the same period of time. I cannot have 
managed my travel with discretion.” 

She stopped abruptly. For a moment there 
was silence. The two men beside her did not 
move, but their aspect changed. The American 
seemed to relax; his tense energy to ebb. The 
menace in him changed to an aspect of disaster; 
on the contrary, there came into the posture of 
Monsieur Jonquelle a certain tenseness. He 
spoke, addressing the American. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “is it true that the base¬ 
ment room of this house was thus hung with cob¬ 
webs?” 

The man replied as though his jaws were stiff. 

“Yes,” he said, “the whole rotten ceiling was 
hung with them. I always went in with an electric 

171 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


flash—a candle—good God! What an accident! 

Monsieur Jonquelle arose. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “this was no accident. I 
will show you.” 

The villa had long been closed. Insects had 
had their will with it. He went over to a shutter, 
unhooked it, swung it a little open, removed an 
immense cobweb, and came back to the border 
of the terrace. 

The American, amazed and in a profound in¬ 
terest, moved to where he stood on the border of 
the terrace before the woman in the chair. The 
woman alone seemed beyond any concern. She 
neither moved nor spoke. She smiled vaguely, 
maintaining her posture of repose. The Ameri¬ 
can could not conceal his profound interest. 

“Not an accident!” he said. “What do you 
mean?” 

Monsieur Jonquelle held the web up in his fin¬ 
gers, struck a match, and touched the web with 
the flame. There was no flash. The filaments of 
the web shriveled a little under the heat. 

“I mean,” said Monsieur Jonquelle, “that a 
spider-web is not inflammable, and therefore the 
basement of this house could not have taken fire 
from the flame of a candle.” 

After that, two events seemed to happen as 
though they were timed. The woman laughed, 

172 







The Woman on the Terrace 


and the infuriated American lunged toward her; 
but Monsieur Jonquelle’s foot caught his ankle 
with a swift outward turn, and the man plunged 
headlong on the terrace. He got a heavy fall, 
for all the vigor of the infuriated creature was in 
action. 

What followed seemed to attend with an equal 
swiftness. The two footmen of the Princess Kit- 
zenzof were over the prostrate figure. Instantly 
his hands and feet were secured; a gag was in his 
mouth, and they had removed him. 

It was all like a flawless scene in a drama, re¬ 
hearsed to a perfection of detail. In thirty sec¬ 
onds it was ended. 

“Monsieur,” said the woman in the chair, “you 
are very clever, and your agents are perfect.” 

She did not move during the whole violence of 
the scene, and her voice was now in no whit 
changed. It was the same detached, unemotional 
voice. She removed her hands from the arms of 
the chair and extended them, the slender wrists 
together. 

“Do you wish me, also, to accept the gage 
d* amour of the Service de la Surete?” 

Monsieur Jonquelle did not at once reply. 

He went back to his chair. He lighted a cigar¬ 
ette, and he remained for some moments like a 
man at ease. Then he spoke. 

“Tell me, Madame,” he said, “why did you de- 

173 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


stroy this house in the Faubourg St. Germain?” 

The woman replaced her hands on the arms of 
the chair. 

“Monsieur,” she said, “at the end of life, in 
the face of a death that is inevitable, I have sud¬ 
denly come to realize a thing that has been an 
inscrutable mystery to me.” 

She extended her hand, on which was a plain, 
narrow, worn, gold band. 

“This bracelet,” she said, “worth, perhaps, a 
dozen francs, was given me by Paul Verlain, 
a boy who loved me. He was killed at the 
Marne.” 

She moved her hand, taking up an immense 
necklace of pearls, matched and priceless, that 
hung almost to her knees. 

This necklace,” she said, “was given me by 
Count de Lamare. He was killed in the great 
allied advance on the Somme.” 

She extended her hand to include the place 
about her. 

“This villa,” she said, “was given me by the 
Marquis de Nord. He died at Verdun.” 

She paused. 

“Monsieur,” she said, “I, a child of Montmar¬ 
tre, an apache, called Casque dOr* from the effect 
of my yellow hair, which I had been taught to put 
up as though it were the headdress of Minerva; 
I, who had faith in nothing, realized that these 

174 







The Woman on the Terrace 


men—Paul Verlain, who loved me, and who also 
loved life; Count de Lamare, who loved me, and 
who also loved pleasure; the Marquis de Nord, 
who loved me, and who also loved power—these 
men loved something other than me, or life, or 
pleasure, or power; loved it infinitely more; loved 
it beyond any measure of comparison, for they 
left these things and went eagerly to death for it. 

“I thought about it, Monsieur. It obsessed 
me. 

She suddenly rose as with a single gesture, as 
though she had been lifted to her feet by invisible 
hands. 

“Then suddenly, Monsieur, with a flash of 
vision, on that night when I was alone in the house 
in the Faubourg St. Germain, I understood this 
thing—I saw that the work in which Monsieur 
Dillard was engaged—that the prints with which 
the house was literally packed—would help to 
destroy the very thing which these men, Paul Ver¬ 
lain, Count de Lamare, and the Marquis de Nord, 
had given their lives to save.” 

She spoke with a sudden, eager vigor. 

“It would help to destroy France—and, there¬ 
fore, I took a candle in my hand and burned it. 
Do you know what the valuable prints were with 
which this house in the Faubourg St. Germain 
was crowded on that night?” 

“I do,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle. “Or I 

175 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

should not have taken these elaborate precautions 
to secure the American, Dillard. 

“The house in the Faubourg St. Germain was 
packed with conterfeit notes of all the high- 
denomination paper currency of the French Re¬ 
public, printed, by this man, from plates etched by 
the German engraver, Wagenheim of Munich.” 





VIII .—The Triangular Hypothesis 

The man’s loose body seemed to have been 
packed into his clothing as though under a pres¬ 
sure. There was the vague note of victory in his 
voice. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “no dead Frenchman has 
ever been valued to us at less than fifty thousand 
francs. He may have been a worthless vendor of 
roast chestnuts before the Madeleine, but if he 
died in Stamboul, he was straightway worth fifty 
thousand francs. You will observe, Monsieur, 
that your government has already fixed the price 
for murder.” 

The Prefect of Police looked across the long, 
empty room at the closed door. 

“But was this dead man a citizen of the Turkish 
Empire? We seem to have a memory of him.” 

The Oriental smiled. 

“Citizens,” he said, “are of two classes—your 
Foreign Office laid it down—the citizen which is 
born, and the citizen which is acquired. Each are 
valued to us at fifty thousand francs, as your 
schedule in the indemnities to the Sublime Porte 

177 


Monsieur Jonquelle 


so clearly set it out. Dernburg Pasha was 
acquired, Monsieur. But he is dead! And the 
indemnity for him, as you have so admirably 
established it, is not subject to a discount. . . . 
You came from the Foreign Office, Monsieur? ’ 

The Prefect of Police bowed. He put his hand 
into the pocket of his coat as with a casual ges¬ 
ture, his fingers closing over an article that lay 
concealed there. 

The Envoy went on: 

“I found the Minister Dellaux of an unfailing 
courtesy; if a subject of our empire has been mur¬ 
dered in Paris, an adequate indemnity would be 
paid.” 

The scene at the Foreign Office, when he had 
been called in before the Minister, came up for an 
instant to Monsieur Jonquelle. The tall, elegant 
old man had been profoundly annoyed. This 
murder came at a vexatious moment, at pre¬ 
cisely the moment when the Foreign Office was 
pressing for the indemnity on the French subjects 
slain in Stamboul. The very argument had been 
unfortunate. Stamboul must be made safe, and 
here was Paris unsafe! Here was Dernburg 
Pasha dead in the Faubourg St. Germain. 

Monsieur Jonquelle had made no reply to the 
Minister. He had come down to the house in the 
Faubourg St. Germain of Paris; he had gone over 
it; he had examined everything; but he had made 

1 7 8 





The Triangular Hypothesis 

no comment. Either he had arrived at no conclu¬ 
sion, or else he had a large knowledge of the affair, 
coupled with some definite plan. 

It was an old house, maintaining in its essentials 
a departed elegance. The floor of the drawing¬ 
room was of alternate blocks of white and black 
marble, laid down like a chess-board. There was 
a door at one end leading into a small walled gar¬ 
den. On the other side of the drawing-room, 
directly opposite, there was another door of pre¬ 
cisely the same character leading into a sort of 
library—the room in which Dernburg had been 
found in the morning, dead on the floor. 

To the Envoy of the Turkish Government in 
Paris, this assassination had the aspect of a dip¬ 
lomatic affair. He had gone at once to the For¬ 
eign Office with his demand for an indemnity, and 
then he had come here into this drawing-room and 
sat down before the door until the matter should 
be settled. 

“Monsieur is satisfied?” he said. “He has 
seen everything?” 

“I have not quite seen everything,” replied 
Monsieur Jonquelle, his glance traveling to the 
slight bulge in the man’s tight-fitting waistcoat 
pocket, “but I am entirely satisfied.” 

“The evidences are complete, Monsieur,” said 
the Envoy, smiling. “Dernburg Pasha lived alone 
in this house. Late last night a Frenchman called 

179 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


on him. They were in the room yonder together. 
The windows were open, although the shutters 
were closed. Persons passing on the street heard 
the victims distinctly—the voice of a Frenchman, 
Monsieur, and the voice of Dernburg Pasha. Is 
it not true?” 

“Unfortunately, Monsieur, we cannot deny it. 
It is precisely the truth.” 

“And it is true, also, Monsieur,” the man went 
on, “that these voices were raised as in anger or 
as in contention upon some point. The words did 
not carry accurately to the persons in the street, 
but the inflections of the words and the menace in 
them were not to be mistaken. It is established!” 

“Quite established, Monsieur,” replied the Pre¬ 
fect of Police. Again the Oriental smiled. 

“And it cannot be denied that Dernburg Pasha 
is dead. He was found this morning on the floor 
of the library yonder, with his throat cut—Mon¬ 
sieur has himself observed the indicatory evi¬ 
dences of this assassination. . . . The late vis¬ 
itor”—he looked up sharply—“Monsieur admits 
that he was a Frenchman?” 

“Ah, yes,” replied the Prefect of Police, “the 
man was a Frenchman.” 

The Envoy went on with his summary of the 
evidence. 

“The late visitor, a Frenchman; the quarrel; 
the dead man remaining in the library; the spots 

180 







The Triangular Hypothesis 


of blood on this floor that dripped from the 
weapon in the assassin’s hand as he went out—he 
escaped from the door yonder into the garden and 
thence into the street: it is all certain, Monsieur?” 

“It is all quite certain,” replied the Prefect. He 
paused then: 

“But while the events are certain, I am not pre¬ 
cisely certain that we have the same conception 
of them. For example, Monsieur, will you tell me 
how, in your opinion, the assassin escaped from 
the garden into the street? This garden was not 
used; the gate leading into the street is nailed up. 
I should be glad of your opinion on this point.” 

“With pleasure,” replied the Oriental. 

“The man escaped from the garden in the sim¬ 
plest fashion. He climbed over the wall, Mon¬ 
sieur. The wall is of no great height. It is en¬ 
tirely possible.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle lifted his eyebrows like one 
relieved from a perplexity. 

“Quite possible,” he said. “An assassin could 
have climbed over the wall without the slightest 
difficulty. I am obliged for your opinion on this 
manner of escape, Monsieur.” 

For a moment he seemed to reflect; then he 
addressed another question to the Envoy. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “there are blood drops on 
this floor.” He looked down at the marble ex¬ 
tending to the closed door of the library beyond 

181 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


them. “I should be glad to know how you think 
they came here.” 

“The explanation is entirely clear,” replied the 
Turkish Envoy. “The assassin went out in haste 
with the knife in his hand, and these blood drops 
dripped from the point of it.” 

“That would be possible, Monsieur,” replied 
Jonquelle. “That might happen!” 

The Oriental stooped over a little and glanced 
along the floor. 

“You have observed these blood drops, Mon¬ 
sieur? They are quite clear.” 

“I have observed them closely,” replied the 
Prefect of Police. “There are seven of these 
blood drops. They are about the length of a 
man’s step apart, and they are each clearly visible 
on a white square of the floor. Your explanation 
seems admirable, Monsieur.” 

He turned suddenly from a contemplation of 
these evidences into a vague casuistry. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “I have thought a great 
deal about chance evidences of crime. Do you 
suppose there are any laws of chance?” 

The Oriental seemed to reflect. 

“The very word ‘chance,’ Monsieur,” he said, 
“precludes the running of any law. Events which 
result from the operation of law are naturally out¬ 
side of the definition of the word ‘chance.’ ” 

The Prefect of Police did not pause to discuss 

182 





The Triangular Hypothesis 


this comment; he went on, as though the reply 
were merely an interruption of his discourse. 

“Events,” he said, “all indicatory evidences in 
criminal investigation, we divide into two classes: 
those which happen by design and those which 
happen by chance. By design we mean by the will 
and intention of some individual, and by chance 
we mean all those events which happen outside of 
such an intention. Would you think, Monsieur, 
that there would be any distinguishing features, 
by virtue of which one might put indicatory evi¬ 
dences of a crime under one or the other of these 
heads?” 

He continued as though he had entered upon a 
subject which engaged his attention too closely for 
the pauses of a dialogue, as though his inquiry 
were a mere form of statement and not intended 
for an answer. 

“It is an immense and fascinating field for spec¬ 
ulation. It seems to be the persistent belief of 
every human intelligence that it can, by design, 
create a sequence of indicatory evidences, which 
will have all the appearance of a happening by 
chance. But after long reflection and the study 
of innumerable instances, I have come to the con¬ 
clusion that this thing cannot be done. It is my 
opinion that no human intelligence can grasp the 
vast ramification of events with a sufficient com¬ 
prehension to enable it to lay down a sequence of 

183 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


false evidences that will have, at every point, the 
aspect of a chance happening.” 

He did not wait for a reply. He seemed to lose 
all interest in the subject with the closing word 
of his final sentence. He turned abruptly to an¬ 
other phase of the matter. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “what, in your opinion, 
was the motive for this death of Dernburg?” 

The Oriental replied at once. 

“I do not know that, Monsieur,” he said. “But 
does it matter? We are not concerned to estab¬ 
lish the motive for this murder. I do not care 
even to establish the identity of the assassin. We 
have established that he is French, and that is 
sufficient for the indemnity. You may determine 
the motive, if you like.” 

“I have already determined it,” replied Jon¬ 
quelle. 

“And what was it, Monsieur, since you have 
determined it?” 

“It was despair!” replied the Prefect of Police. 
“Do you know what Dernburg Pasha was doing 
in Paris?” 

The Envoy’s eyes narrowed. He looked at 
Jonquelle a moment as in a furtive inquiry. 

“I do not,” he said. “What was his mission in 
Paris, Monsieur?” 

“You will be surprised to learn it,” continued 
the Prefect of Police. “Dernburg was undertak- 

184 







The Triangular Hypothesis 


ing to falsify a work of art. It was a very re¬ 
markable work of art, and one of value. The 
persons who originally produced this work of art 
expended a great sum of money, an almost incredi¬ 
ble sum of money, to perfect it. If one could 
falsify it successfully, one could make a fortune 
at the venture. Dernburg knew this. He had 
thought about it for a long time. He had con¬ 
ducted a great number of experiments. Finally 
he was satisfied that the thing could be success¬ 
fully done, and he came here from Stamboul, took 
this abandoned house in the Faubourg St. Ger¬ 
main, brought with him his devices, and prepared 
to undertake the great thing which he had in mind. 
Then, Monsieur, before the thing could be accom¬ 
plished, the mysterious visitor appeared; and this 
morning Dernburg is dead.” 

It was evident that the Oriental was profoundly 
puzzled. 

“I do not understand you, Monsieur,” he said. 
“You say that Dernburg Pasha had perfected a 
method by which he intended to falsify a work of 
art?” 

“Yes, Monsieur.” 

“Then he was called upon by one who knew of 
this method and wished to rob him of it?” 

“No, Monsieur.” 

“Then by those to whom the original of the art 

185 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


belonged, and wished to prevent this falsifica¬ 
tion?” 

“No, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect of Police. 
“Dernburg Pasha’s death resulted from a sense 
of despair.” 

Jonquelle took his hand from his pocket, re¬ 
vealed the thing upon which his fingers had closed 
when he sat down to this conference. He opened 
his hand so that the thing was visible. It looked 
like a little square box of some white substance, as 
of marble or chalk or alabaster. It was not 
larger than two inches square. It was, perhaps, 
an inch thick, made in two pieces. There was a 
tiny hole, like a keyhole with a beveled edge, on 
the line where these pieces joined. The box had a 
heavy rubber band about it. It lay for a moment 
exposed in the palm of Monsieur Jonquelle’s 
hand. 

“I have here,” he said, “the thing that was 
the cause of this man’s death. It was also the 
cause of his misfortunes leading up to this fatal 
morning. It has been an obsession with him. In 
the German Empire he undertook this thing. His 
design was discovered, and he fled to Turkey. But 
he took his obsession with him, and when the war 
was ended, he saw a method of getting an indem¬ 
nity out of France with it—a method by which he 
could enrich himself at the cost of France. He 
worked out his plan carefully; he came to Paris; 

186 





The Triangular Hypothesis 


he got this house. He was Teady to put his plan 
into effect when, unfortunately for him, the mys- 
terious visitor of last night appeared. 

“Dernburg was shrewd, unscrupulous and far¬ 
sighted. But he w r as not shrewd enough, and he 
was not farsighted enough. The stranger, who 
came to see him last night, knew all about him, 
knew every detail of his activities, knew the big 
plan that he had in mind. He had watched him, 
had followed his career. He knew the very day 
that he came to Paris. He knew his object in 
taking this empty house in the Faubourg St. Ger¬ 
main. He knew every step of the secret arrange¬ 
ments which Dernburg had perfected for the 
carrying out of his scheme; and at the opportune 
hour he entered this house. These are the facts, 
Monsieur, which I have accurately ascertained, 
which are true beyond doubt.” 

“And so,” said the Oriental, “this mysterious 
stranger finally ran Dernburg Pasha to earth here 
and killed him.” 

The Prefect of Police arrested the man’s dis¬ 
course with a gesture. 

“You travel, Monsieur,” he said, “a point 
beyond my conclusions. Do we know that this 
midnight visitor is the assassin? We must con¬ 
sider the evidences as they are presented to us.” 

“The evidences are conclusive of this fact,” 
replied the Envoy, “if circumstantial evidences 

1 87 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

can ever be conclusive of a murder. Here is the 
opportunity, the quarrel, the dead man remaining 
in the library, blood drops falling from the 
weapon on this drawing-room floor as he hastily 
crossed it, and the escape over the wall of the 
garden.” 

“But, Monsieur,” said the Prefect of Police, 
“where is the motive? The writers on the value 
of indicatory evidences, in the investigation of a 
criminal case, tell us that there should be time, 
opportunity and motive. The time, Monsieur, 
and the opportunity are here, plainly indicated; 
but the motive? Where shall we look for that?” 

The Oriental turned, as with an inspiration, in 
his chair. 

“Why, Monsieur,” he said, “you spoke at con¬ 
siderable length upon the motive. You seemed to 
know it quite well. You conceal, as you have indi¬ 
cated, the somewhat concrete evidence of it in 
your hand.” 

“Quite true, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect of 
Police; “but you will observe that it is I who am 
familiar with this motive. It is I who have what 
you are pleased to call ‘this concrete evidence’ in 
my hand. And that brings me to an interesting 
hypothesis with three phases to be considered. 
Let us consider them, Monsieur! I name them in 
the order in which they occur to me: first, Mon¬ 
sieur, that I killed the man; second, that you 

18 8 





The Triangular Hypothesis 


killed him; and third, that the agency that killed 
Dernburg Pasha is no longer living in this world.” 

The Oriental turned suddenly, his face con¬ 
tracted and tense, but his voice firm. 

“Very well, Monsieur,” he said; “whither do 
these suggestions lead you?” 

Jonquelle continued in an even voice. 

“To arrive at that,” he said, “we must first 
consider the evidences which have led us to believe 
that Dernburg was killed by the man with whom 
he quarreled last night in the library. Now, if 
you please, Monsieur, we will look a little at the 
indicatory signs.” 

He paused. 

“There is always this disturbing feature about 
circumstantial evidence, the trick of pointing in 
the direction that one is going. If one has a con¬ 
clusion, one will find that the circumstantial evi¬ 
dence supports it. You have a theory, Monsieur, 
that this visitor was Dernburg’s assassin, and con¬ 
sequently, to you, the indicatory evidence supports 
that theory. But, Monsieur, I have the theory 
that the visitor was not the assassin, and I bid you 
observe how the indicatory evidences will turn 
themselves about in order to support the theory 
which I maintain. Take, for example, these blood 
drops on the marble floor of the drawing-room. 
In support of your theory, they have fallen by 
hazard from the assassin’s knife in his flight, and 

189 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


you would cite them as confirmatory of your 
theory. 

“Now, Monsieur, I would cite them also as 
confirmatory of mine. 

“You will observe that each of these seven 
blood drops has fallen on a white square of this 
checkered marble floor. There is no drop of 
blood on a black square. Why, Monsieur, should 
these drops appear only on the white squares? I 
consider that fact with my theory in mind, and I 
conclude that they so appear because the one who 
placed them there wished them to be seen. We 
cannot conceive that he would undertake to create 
evidence against himself. And it is beyond our 
conception of coincidence that each of these seven 
blood drops should, by accident, have fallen pre¬ 
cisely on a white square when there was an equal 
number of black squares intervening. Therefore, 
Monsieur, these evidences did not come by chance; 
they came by design.” 

He continued like one who recites the details 
of a formula: 

“I find my theory also confirmed at a farther 
point. You explained to me, when I inquired, that 
the assassin, after fleeing through this drawing¬ 
room into the walled garden, had escaped by 
climbing over the wall, since the gate was nailed 
up and had been so nailed up for a long time. 
Now, Monsieur, I caused this wall to be exam- 

190 





The Triangular Hypothesis 

ined. The whole of the top of it is coated over 
with dust. At no point has any of this dust been 
removed; consequently the assassin did not escape 
by climbing over the wall, for if he had under¬ 
taken to climb the wall at any point, his body, in 
that labor, would have removed the coating of 
dust. You see, Monsieur, I do not find your 
indicatory evidences designed to support your 
theory. They seem rather conclusively to estab¬ 
lish my own.” 

He made a vague gesture as though to dismiss 
the matter. 

“And so, Monsieur, we find ourselves before 
the triangular hypothesis! Did I murder Dern- 
burg Pasha, or did you, or was he, in fact, mur¬ 
dered at all?” 

The Oriental looked at the man in a sort of 
wonder. 

“He was surely murdered,” he said. 

The Prefect of Police spoke like one in some 
reflection. 

“It is by no means certain.” 

“Not certain?” echoed the Envoy. “The man 
is dead!” 

“One may be dead without having been mur¬ 
dered,” replied the Prefect of Police. “It is pos¬ 
sible that the hand that gave Dernburg Pasha his 
fatal wound is no longer alive in this world.” 

191 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


The Turkish Envoy made an exclamation of 
surprise. 

“You cannot mean that Dernburg Pasha was 
murdered by a dead man!” 

“It is a conceivable theory,” replied Monsieur 
Jonquelle, “that Dernburg Pasha was struck 
down by a hand that we can no longer consider 
to be living. 

“But if you please, we will take up these theo¬ 
ries in their order. Did I murder Dernburg 
Pasha? It is an interesting hypothesis, and I 
should be glad to consider it at some length. But 
it seems to require no extended deductions 
to conclude it. We have shown that the myste¬ 
rious visitor who called on Dernburg last night 
was not his assassin, because the evidences 
which seem so to indicate were laid down by 
design and did not come about by accident. 
They were laid down by the intention of 
some person, some person who wished to estab¬ 
lish that this visitor was the assassin. But the 
visitor himself could not have wished to estab¬ 
lish that he was the assassin; consequently he 
could not have made these indicatory evidences, 
and therefore he was not the assassin of Dernburg 
Pasha.” 

He paused. 

“And now, Monsieur, as I was the visitor who 
called on Dernburg Pasha last night, it must be 

192 





The Triangular Hypothesis 

clear that I was not the assassin that struck him 
down. These conclusions may seem to interlock 
with a slight obscurity. But if you reflect upon 
them, Monsieur, you will observe that they are 
sound and convincing.” 

There was a moment’s silence. The Oriental 
did not speak, and the Prefect of Police continued: 

“Now, Monsieur, we approach the second 
hypothesis: did you murder Dernburg Pasha? 

“Here, Monsieur, one finds himself confronted 
with certain difficulties. You took charge of this 
house the moment it was ascertained that the man 
was dead.” 

The Envoy interrupted: 

“I did, Monsieur. As a representative of the 
Turkish Government, it was my duty to take 
charge at once of the property of one of its mur¬ 
dered citizens. I came at once and took charge 
of it.” 

“That is true, Monsieur,” continued the Pre¬ 
fect of Police. “You came as you had the right 
to do, and you took over this house as it was your 
duty to do. And from this base we may go for¬ 
ward with the hypothesis in its first inquiry— 
namely, did I create these false evidences on the 
floor of this drawing-room, or did you, or did the 
agency not now living undertake it? 

“Now Monsieur, let us consider these sugges¬ 
tions in a reverse order. If Dernburg Pasha was 

193 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


struck down by a hand not moving alive in the 
world after he died on the floor of the library 
yonder, then such a hand could not have gone for¬ 
ward with the manufacture of these false evi¬ 
dences of his assassination, and we may dismiss it. 
I cannot have manufactured them, Monsieur, be¬ 
cause it is not conceivable that one undertaking 
the assassination would construct evidence of his 
crime to convict himself. Therefore, Monsieur, 
by elimination, we seem to arrive at the conclu¬ 
sion that it was you who manufactured them.” 

The Envoy’s face seemed to form itself into a 
sort of plastic mask. 

“Now,” Jonquelle went on, “if you manufac¬ 
tured them, Monsieur, it was with a deliberate 
object. That object would be to fasten the crime 
upon another. But one does not undertake to 
fasten a crime upon another without an adequate 
reason in himself. Now, what reason, Monsieur, 
could you have had for wishing to establish that I, 
who called upon Dernburg late last night, had 
accomplished his murder and fled, carefully drop¬ 
ping splotches of blood on the white squares of the 
floor of this drawing-room, and escaping over a 
wall covered with a coating of dust which I did 
not remove? What could have been your object 
in undertaking to establish these facts, if you were 
yourself guiltless of his death?” 

The man’s reply was quite simple and without 
emotion. 


194 





The Triangular Hypothesis 


“Why, Monsieur, should I wish to assassinate 
Dernburg Pasha?” 

“Did you not wish to take over this house?” 
replied the Prefect of Police. “And if you took 
it over, you would take it over with what it con¬ 
tains. Let me show you, Monsieur, the treasure 
that it contains!” 

He stooped over, slipped the point of a knife- 
blade under one of the large white marble squares 
in the drawing-room floor, and lifted it up. 

These squares had been laid down on wooden 
sills, nailed together, and floored over under¬ 
neath. Each square had, therefore, a sort of 
wooden pocket beneath it. This wooden pocket 
under the white square that Monsieur Jonquelle 
removed was filled with gold pieces. 

The Oriental, bending over, made a profound 
exclamation of surprise. He remained immov¬ 
able in an overwhelming wonder. That the man 
was amazed at something of which, up to that 
moment, he had not had the slightest conception, 
was clearly evident. 

Monsieur Jonquelle permitted the marble 
square to go back into its place, and he returned 
to his chair. The Oriental sat down beyond him, 
speechless in his amazement. The Prefect of Po¬ 
lice continued to speak as though the man s con¬ 
cern were not a thing which he had observed. 

“And so you see, Monsieur, we have here the 
motive, the opportunity, and the construction of 

195 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


these false evidences, to indicate that you were 
the assassin of Dernburg Pasha. And again I beg 
you to observe how fatal it is to proceed with in¬ 
dicatory evidences when one wishes to establish 
a theory. It is fortunate, Monsieur, that it is I 
who considered these evidences against you, for 
it is I who know that Dernburg Pasha was dead 
when you arrived in this house.” 

He paused. 

“And from the wound in his throat, I knew at 
once what hand it was that inflicted it—a hand 
not now living!” 

“The hand of a dead man!” echoed the 
Oriental. “You mean the hand of a dead man?” 

“I mean the hand of the dead Dernburg 
Pasha,” replied the Prefect. 

“The wound began heavily on the left side and 
tailed off to the right. That is the slash of a 
suicide. Death wounds, inflicted by one intent on 
taking his own life, are always inflicted on the 
left side, because they are undertaken with the 
right hand, and if they are done with a knife, 
they begin with a heavy incision that tails out as 
the knife is drawn to the right—as the strength 
of the person undertaking to inflict the wound 
fails. Suicidal wounds, when inflicted with a 
sharp instrument, have always these evidential 
signs. They cannot be mistaken.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle arose. 

196 






The Triangular Hypothesis 


“Let me clear this mystery,” he said. “Dern- 
burg Pasha was one of the most accomplished 
counterfeiters in the world.” 

He opened his hand. 

“This device, which looks like an alabaster box, 
is a mold made of plaster for the purpose of 
counterfeiting one of the largest gold coins of the 
French currency. Dernburg came here, took this 
house, carried forward his undertaking until he 
had stored the squares under this drawing-room 
with false coins. Then when he had finished— 
when he had got the coins molded, gold-plated and 
hidden, ready for the business of their distribu¬ 
tion, I called on him last night! It was my voice 
that was heard outside. I showed him that he 
was at the end of his tether—that the house was 
guarded; and I came away leaving open to him 
the only escape he had. He effected that escape 
with a razor drawn across his throat.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle paused, his voice firm, even 
and unhurried. 

“You appeared, Monsieur, a little later, and 
seeing an opportunity to obtain an indemnity from 
France for a murdered subject of your country, 
put the razor into your pocket and clumsily 
daubed the white squares of this drawing-room 
floor with the evidential signs of an assassina- 





IX .—The Problem of the Five Marks 

I TRAVELED up to Ostend with Monsieur 
Jonquelle, the Prefect of Police. 

There was never one seeking the solution of a 
mystery who was left so wholly in the dark. My 
father had sent me over from America, but I 
came under sealed orders. I think his motive 
was more to test me a little in the world than to 
put me into a problem with the Service de la 
Surete —that detective department of the great 
police system of France. 

I did not know there was a mystery in the 
affair until I came with my sealed orders to 
Monsieur Jonquelle. 

I knew, of course, that my great-aunt was 
dead and that there were complications of some 
sort; but there were always complications, I imag¬ 
ined, in the settlement of estates in a foreign 
country. Still, if I had reflected, I might have 
seen something significant in the fact that I was 
sent to the Service de la Surete instead of a bank¬ 
ing house or a solicitor. My father was at the 
head of a financial house of some importance in 
the world; he would make no mistake. 

198 


The Problem cf the Five Marks 


Monsieur Jonquelle smiled when he read my 
sealed orders: 

“And so I am not to leave you to the depravity 
of Paris!” 

He looked sharply at me. And then his ex¬ 
pression changed. He seemed to fall into re¬ 
flection, fingering the cord of his monocle, his eyes 
vaguely on me. 

Had I perhaps seen the “Review of Toy Land” 
at the Folies Bergeres? 

I had not. 

“I shall put you down, Sir Galahad,” he said, 
“in the city of Ostend, while I- look about a bit 
in Belgium. You will require to be hardened by 
adventures.” 

I slept that night at the Hotel Lotti and jour¬ 
neyed on the following day to Ostend. I learned 
little at the Service de la Surete, but I learned 
enough to know that my great-aunt’s death was 
involved in something puzzling. She was unmar¬ 
ried, rich, eccentric, and almost unknown to us. 
I asked Monsieur Jonquelle how she died. 

He looked me over as one might look over an 
infant at a prize show and then he answered I 
would be too young to understand that! 

Too young to understand what had killed my 
aunt! I, who had a degree from Harvard and 
was about to enter my father’s business! 

I tried with a certain dignity to break through 

199 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


the man’s facetious manner. Would he kindly 
tell me how my aunt had died? Why, certainly 
he would tell me: she had been killed, and he was 
searching France for her assassin. But I must 
not get the conception of an Apache with a knife. 
She had suffered from no act of violence, no hand 
had touched her; there had not even been a will 
to death on the part of her assassins. And yet 
she had been killed. And he, and every intelli¬ 
gence of the Service de la Surete labored to find 
a solution of the problem. 

In Ostend adventure awaited me! 

It was there in the group of hurrying people, 
as I got down from the car a step behind Mon¬ 
sieur Jonquelle; a girl’s face caught for an instant 
and then lost in the crowd. 

But her face and the manner in which she had 
regarded me remained. 

It was a lovely oval face under a mass of 
abundant straw-colored hair, and with great blue 
eyes. But the lure was in something more than 
this exquisite face. It was in the expression that 
changed as by some enchantment in the moment 
that I had a vision of her; that expression, anx¬ 
ious and disturbed—startled—like a frightened 
wild thing when I caught it first in the swaying 
crowd, changed as it regarded me; an immense 
surprise, then a sort of wonder, and then some 

200 





The Problem of the Five Marks 

light as of a sudden daring purpose appeared, 
luminous as with a sort of deviltry. 

I said nothing to Monsieur Jonquelle but I fol¬ 
lowed him to the Maison Blanc with a certain 
sense of interest. 

I would find that face. Easily I shall find her, 
was the belief I held; and easily I found her, was 
the fact that followed. 

Monsieur Jonquelle had departed on the Brus¬ 
sels road and I sat over my breakfast in the 
dining room that looks out on the long narrow 
street that runs landward through the city of 
Ostend from the Digue de Mer. It is a cobbled 
paved street of shops and little markets and there 
was a busy moving of peasant figures in it: baggy- 
trousered fishermen shuffling in their wooden 
shoes and Flanders women in their native dress, 
picturesque and vivid. 

I watched the mass movement in the long 
street for some time before I got down to the de¬ 
tails in it. Then I noticed a big, sturdy dog har¬ 
nessed to a little cart standing in the street below 
my window, beside a small grocer’s shop. 

I got my hat and stick and sauntered out. It 
was a heavenly day, with a soft air from the 
Channel and a brilliant sun. As I came out, the 
door of the grocer’s shop opened and the girl 
I was setting out to seek was there, in the sun, 

201 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


before me. She looked like a heavenly doll In her 
peasant dress. 

She smiled when she saw me, the corners of her 
mouth dimpling; and she spoke to me in a queer 
lisping sort of foreign English: 

“Monsieur is an American?” 

“Yes.” 

“How nice!” 

The sympathy, the frank admiration in the 
words were adorable. I felt before her smile in 
that moment that no gift of God could equal be¬ 
ing an American. 

“You came last night from Paris . . . with 
the father?” 

She held up the warning finger of a little, 
white, doubled hand. “I saw . . . does the 
father perhaps observe us?” 

I laughed, and added the explanation. The 
man was not my father. He was Monsieur Jon¬ 
quelle, the Prefect of Police of Paris. And he 
did not, perhaps, observe us! He had gone on 
to Brussels. She was glad he had gone on. Why 
did I, “so nice,” travel about with a Prefect of 
Police ? 

I explained that he was concerned with some 
affair of his trade in Paris that took him on to 
Brussels; I came to idle and amuse myself in 
Ostend. 

She looked about her in the street with a 


202 





• The Problem of the Five Marks 


troubled air. Leopold, her dog that drew the 
cart, was getting old, and like a man in years, 
would have his way. He was all right on the 
great road but he was quarrelsome in a crowded 
street. She had been waiting for the people to 
finish their morning affairs and leave her an 
empty way for him. But the street grew only the 
more densely crowded and she must go. Would 
I help her to the great road? 

I would have helped her to the world’s end! 

And on either side, at the dog’s muzzle, we 
threaded our way carefully through the long 
street across the environs of Ostend to the wide 
road that runs behind the sand dunes through the 
flat fields to the north. 

She prattled like a child at every step with all 
the simplicity and curious interest of a child; a 
thousand questions that trod upon one another’s 
heels and hardly waited for an answer—like some 
friendly tot by a peasant’s fireside who asks 
about one’s intimate and reserved affairs and dis¬ 
closes in return the names and habits of the barn 
fowl. 

When we reached the great road, she tucked 
herself into the tiny cart and bade me adieu. 
And before I could realize what had happened 
she was gone. She smiled back at me and called 
something which I did not hear. The dog hur- 

203 







Monsieur Jonquelle 

ried and the tiny cart drew away rapidly on the 
long road toward the north. 

It was all so like a fairy story that I remained 
motionless in the road. 

I returned to the Maison Blanc, but it was for 
luncheon only and a brief reflection; what I would 
do was already determined. I would search that 
road to the north. I set out on foot. One has 
more leisure to observe when one goes alone with 
a stick in one’s hand. 

I found fields about me separated by wide 
ditches, then the thin line of a village extended 
along the road. And beyond that the road 
divided. The sun was half down the sky as I 
turned back. I was approaching the village when 
that fortune of events that seemed to attend me 
extended an unexpected favor, as I passed a little 
house surrounded by a wall with a white door 
opening on the road. 

As I drew near, within a dozen paces of the 
door, some one flung this door violently open and 
rushed out, nearly falling in her haste. It was 
the girl I sought, and with two mighty strides I 
caught her. She turned like a wild thing in my 
arms and then, when she saw who it was, with a 
little gasp relaxed. 

“Oh!” she murmured, “it is you; did the good 
God send you?” 

For a moment she went all limp in my arms, 

204 





• The Problem of the Five Marks 


trembling; then she sprang up, clutched my hand 
and took me with her through the door, and di¬ 
rectly into the cottage. 

The door from the path opened into a room 
that the girl evidently maintained for herself, 
and beyond it in the one adjoining, in a chair be¬ 
side a window, sat a big old man, his hands sup¬ 
ported by the wide arms of the chair and his great 
bald head fallen forward. I thought for a 
moment that he was dead. But when I put my 
hand on him the pulse beat in his temples and his 
hands were warm, and in a moment his eyelids 
slowly opened, and I saw that the man was alive 
and conscious. 

The girl, who had followed at my elbow, drew 
me gently away through the door. She bade me 
wait until she should return; and went back into 
the room, closing the door behind her. 

This was no peasant’s room. It was bright 
with chintz. The little women’s things about in 
it showed taste and delicacy. Even a certain lux¬ 
ury of life was indicated. And in the leisure I 
had time to observe the place. There was a prim 
little garden outside inclosed by the white wall, 
and in a corner of it stood the cart and the dog 
harness; the great dog slept on a bed of dried 
grass and leaves. It was a peasant cottage, but 
improved and livable, made charming in fact. 

I was in this mood of wonder when the girl 

205 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


entered with a tray, a teakettle, and some dainty 
porcelain cups. She was composed now and smil¬ 
ing, but her face was white. She arranged the tea 
things on a little inlaid folding table and drew 
up a chair for me. Then, while the water boiled, 
she cleared the mystery with which we were 
environed. 

Her father was a paralytic, growing with each 
day more helpless. His collapse this afternoon 
she had taken for the end, and in her terror she 
had rushed out to find some aid; by the favor of 
the good God I was passing at the moment. They 
were not, as I must have realized, native to Bel¬ 
gium. They were Russian. Her father was a 
savant, and a philologist, an antiquarian at the 
head of the Czar’s great museum in Petrograd. 
They had escaped here. And to go unnoticed she 
had assumed this peasant’s dress; also, there must 
be a way to carry their supplies here from the 
markets, and so came the dog and cart. 

And now disaster enveloped her! 

Her great blue eyes filled, and her soft adorable 
voice became unsteady. They had no longer any 
money, and this affliction that had fallen so swiftly 
on her father left her with no one to whom she 
could go for counsel. 

Could she trust me; would I be a friend to her? 
She must have some one to advise with; would 
I maintain her confidence? 

206 






The Problem of the Five Marks 


There could have been no doubt of me. I would 
have given her my inheritance. I had far more in 
my letter of credit than I could need. I would 
draw it out at the bank to-morrow. 

She only shook her heavenly head at me and 
put out her hands with a little gesture. 

No, no, she could not take anything from me. 
She did not mean that; what she meant was would 
I be a friend to her? Would I respect her con¬ 
fidence? Could she trust me? 

She stood up, released her hand that I had 
imprisoned in the fervor of my assurance, and 
removed the tea things from the table. She took 
them out and returned with some sheets of paper. 

There must have been a dozen sheets, all blank 
except for some scrawling marks in pencil that 
looked like the pothooks made by school children 
in their first copy-books. 

Her father had brought with him out of Russia 
a little packet containing a present from the Czar, 
she said. It was of great value and meant their 
fortune when their store of money was exhausted. 
He was fearful for the safety of the thing and had 
hidden it in Paris, somewhere in the house of the 
Prince Kitzenzof, their friend, with whom they 
had stopped after their escape from Russia. She 
had not thought much about it until this sudden 
paralysis had seized her father. Then he could 
not tell her where it was hidden. He was able to 

207 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


speak when she first asked him, but she could not 
understand. He spoke either some ancient lan¬ 
guage or his words were babble. But he seemed 
to understand what she was saying, and to en¬ 
deavor to reply. 

Then, because he could still move his hands, it 
had occurred to her to have him write the secret, 
and she had put a pencil in his fingers and a pad 
of paper on his chair arm, and he had made these 
pothooks. Over and over again and always in the 
same strange fashion he had made the same 
strange marks. 

As I have written, they looked to me like the 
first efforts of a child to form the curves and 
angles of letters in a copy-book. But the girl, 
beside me, pointed out some peculiar details. 

The paralytic had made always precisely the 
same number of these marks on every sheet that 
had been put before him; there were always five 
of these marks; they were always precisely the 
same with no variation, and they were always in 
precisely the same relative position to one another. 
There was always a line drawn under them across 
the page, and below this line at about the middle 
of it there was an “x.” 

The girl had thought the thing all out and her 
comments were intelligent; in her simple way she 
had followed the very methods of learned men 

208 






The Problem of the Five Marks 

who undertake to decipher an inscription. She 
gave her conclusion: 

The marks were not unmeaning scrawls, because 
they never varied in form; the mere incoherent 
efforts of a paralytic to form letters would not 
have this exactness. Therefore she concluded 
that each of these marks meant something definite. 

Then these characters were always placed in 
the same order and on a line; therefore they were 
related in that order in their meaning—if they 
had a meaning. Her father had always appar¬ 
ently understood her question to him, and seemed 
concerned to give her a direction. The “x” under 
the line, the point of his pencil always dwelt on, 
and returned to, as though he wished her particu¬ 
larly to mark it; as though it, in the whole writing, 
was the important sign. 

Her deep interest might, indeed, influence her 
conclusions, but she thought that these characters 
contained a definite direction about the packet, 
and that the “x” indicated the point at which it 
was concealed, in some relation to the message 
above the line in this mysterious cipher. She 
thought that if she could understand these strange 
marks she would be told where the thing was that 
she sought, and how to find it. 

But she could not understand them. 

They did not resemble any letters of any alpha¬ 
bet with which she was familiar. True, she knew 

209 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


only such modern languages as a girl was taught 
in Petrograd—French, Italian, English, and her 
native one. But her father was a great philologist. 
He would know innumerable languages. Could it 
be that he had written here in some one of the old 
dead languages to which his life had been given 
up? He was always deciphering inscriptions in 
these dead dialects at the Czar’s museum. 

She had thought about it. 

Might it happen that this paralysis had left 
some portion of his mind uninjured—some por¬ 
tion dealing with old things—and benumbed the 
rest? 

I caught at the suggestion: why, yes, that was 
a thing we had been taught in lectures. It was 
called aphasia f and there were many cases; men 
stricken with it forgot their names and history and 
their language, and had to learn to write again like 
a child; there was a case of one who could write 
only in the Greek script after he was so stricken, 
and another who knew only Latin. 

“The thing is simple,” I said. “We require only 
a direction to some archeologist. I will ask Mon¬ 
sieur Jonquelle.” 

‘Oh, no, no!” she cried, “not Monsieur Jon¬ 
quelle, not the police!” 

That would ruin everything. The police would 
find the thing and keep it. It would be seized and 
confiscated. It had been carried into France con- 


210 





The Problem of the Five Marks 

cealed. There had been no declaration at the 
customs. Monsieur Jonquelle was the very last 
person who should know. 

Let her think a moment! And she walked about 
in her perturbation, her face tense, her fingers 
moving. 

“I know,” she said, “the very thing to do . . . 
the very thing!” 

There was a book shop on the street where I 
had found her with the dog, a dingy place with 
a clutter of old books. And now that she remem¬ 
bered there was a big English book with a leather 
back; a sort of lexicon, she thought, that had a 
lot of ancient alphabets grouped in columns on one 
page. I might go in there and see if these strange 
marks resembled the letters of any alphabet. 

I would know the very page. One day, when 
her father was poring over it, she had put her 
thumb on the margin; it was soiled with the dust 
of the shop and left a print. I would be able to 
see that very mark there. 

She was now alive and vital with an eager 
interest. And she literally put me out of the cot¬ 
tage into the road. I must go now at once. 

I set out for Ostend as upon some high adven¬ 
ture. 

As I approached the village a tall man seated 
on a stone by the roadside got up and went on 
before me. I thought for a moment it was Mon- 

211 






Monsieur Jonqueile 

sieur Jonqueile; then I saw the peasant dress he 
wore. I tried to overtake him, but his stride was 
as long and as vigorous as my own and he kept his 
distance. He was still before me when I went 
into the book shop on the street in Ostend. 

I found the book at once. 

It was a copy of Webster’s Unabridged Diction¬ 
ary in some old edition. And a moment later I 
had the very page, headed: Ancient Alphabets: 
Comparative Table of Hieroglyphic and Alpha¬ 
betic Characters. And on the margin was the 
little thumb print! These ancient alphabets 
were arranged in columns, as the girl had said, 
with the equivalent English letter in the last nar¬ 
row column on the right. 

For a little while I was confused by the mass of 
outlandish characters. Then suddenly, in the third 
column from the left, I saw a mark like one of 
those on the sheet of paper that I had brought 
with me, and unfolded here for a comparison. 
I ran up the column and found another and an¬ 
other—the whole five. They were characters of 
the Phoenician alphabet. There could be no doubt 
about them. They were here precisely as the 
paralytic had drawn them on his sheet of paper. 
I wrote down the equivalent English letter below 
each hieroglyphic. 

And they spelled the word LIGHT ! 

I put the paper into my pocket, tipped the shop- 

212 






The Problem of the Five Marks 


keeper, and went to my dinner at the Maison 
Blanc. He gave me a sly wink as I departed: 

“It is a cipher of the heart perhaps, that page. 
Mademoiselle comes, and then Monsieur!” 

I found Monsieur Jonquelle at dinner. He 
talked without waiting for replies. Did I find 
adventures—distressed damsels and a quest of 
fleece? And could I bear it to remain a little? He 
must go back to Brussels. And then he spoke a 
word or two about my great-aunt, whom I was 
near forgetting. Long ago she had loved a Rus¬ 
sian, a grand duke. He had been killed in a duel 
at Nice. But he had given her, for he was in¬ 
credibly rich, a wonderful gage amour, that in 
the end had caused her death. 

He rose, made me a rather pretentious genuflec¬ 
tion, and went out. 

I took it for a marked favor of heaven; for I 
was burning to get back with my report. . . . 

It was scarcely dusk. I hired a motor to take 
me to the village, where I got down, dismissed it 
and went on afoot. I passed the tall peasant at 
his place beyond the village, but he strolled away 

into the field as I approached. 

The girl ran to open the door for me, and stood 
back with her arm behind her as though to bow 
me in. I had the sense of having passed through 
a door in the hill into some witch’s cottage of a 
fairy land. 


213 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


Her big eyes grew wider in a sort of amazed, 
vague wonder when I put the paper down on the 
table and explained what I had discovered. 

She nestled down beside me on the arm of the 
chair in which I sat, and seemed to fall into reflec¬ 
tion, light — light . What could her father mean 
by that cryptic word? Then she spoke slowly, as 
though she thought aloud. 

“A window in Russia is called a ‘light.’ ” 

“Then he means a window,” I said. “What 
window could he mean?” 

She leaned forward until the mass of her straw- 
colored hair touched my face. 

“It would be a window in Paris,” she replied; 
“for the packet is hidden in Paris.” 

Then her voice caught vigor and went eagerly 
on: 

“It would mean a window in the house on the 
Boulevard St. Germain, where we were living. . . . 
What window in that house? . . . Why, surely 
the window in my father’s room there!” 



She sprang up and whirled around the table 
like one of those exquisite spring-driven toys that 
the Swiss so excellently put together. 

214 





The Problem of the Five Marks 


Why, of course, that was the reading of the 
riddle; the window in that room in that house in 
Paris. 

Would I go to Paris in the morning and bring 
it to her? 

I was not a suspect alien from that mad Russia 
all Europe feared. I would not be searched 
and registered, as she and her father had been 
searched and registered at every turning when 
their arrival in France was known; a matron at 
the Customs here had fingered every stitch of 
clothing on her, as though bombs from Moscow 
could be carried in the seam of a bodice. 

The Prince’s house was closed. He was now 
in England; for her father’s health they had come 
here to the sea when their host departed. But 
I would have no difficulty. I could climb the wall 
if the gate was locked, a grating by the door could 
be lifted; the room was the first to the right on 
the first landing of the stairway; and there was 
only a single window in it. The house was 68 on 
the left hand as one faced down the Seine. I could 

not fail to find it. 

Then she stopped, her face lifted. 

But where, about the window, was it hidden? 
The query seemed only then to strike her. 

And here I was able to add my quota of deduc¬ 
tion. Was there not always a line drawn below 

215 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


the word with that mystic cross mark? That 
would mean below the window; and was not the 
“x” always precisely under the center of this line? 
That would mean at the center under the window. 

She whirled off again into the doll dance, as at 
the releasing of the spring that held her. And 
I stood up. Nothing in all the world could have 
been so alluring. The dainty wooden shoes, that 
one could have put into one’s waistcoat pocket, 
were noiseless on the floor, and the little fairy 
figure turned smiling, its arms extended. It was 
all beyond the resistance of any mortal man. As 
she passed beside me I gathered her up into my 
arms. . . . 

I traveled on the morning train to Paris. 

I had not seen Monsieur Jonquelle, but he met 
me as I stepped down from my compartment. He 
was suave and with that bit of acid in his voice. 
He had expected me on an earlier train; and I 
must pardon his lack of leisure. To-morrow he 
would see me—perhaps a little before that. . . . 
He thought I might be toughened now to the 
depravity of Paris. 

I was so bewildered at the man’s appearing 
thus, with such knowledge of my acts, that to 
cover it I put the only query I could think of. 
Had he discovered my great-aunt’s assassin? 

He laughed. Her assassins he had known from 

216 






The Problem of the Five Marks 


the very day. It was another thing that he was 
seeking to discover, and he had tethered out a kid 
to find it. ... I had perhaps heard of that style 
of trapping cheetahs—to tether out a kid! 

Then he made me a low, ironical, continental 
courtesy and walked away. 

I followed precisely the girl’s directions; took 
a motor to the Rue St. Pere, dismissed it at that 
point and walked along the Boulevard St. Ger¬ 
main, until I found the house. Then I turned in 
behind it to a narrow street; a little way between 
two walls. The gate was not locked. I closed it 
behind me and crossed the garden to the door. 
To the right of this door was the old iron grating 
of which the fastenings had rusted out, and by 
which I could enter. But as I approached I no¬ 
ticed that this door was not quite closed. And 
so I pushed it open and went in. 

I found the old marble stairway and ascended. 
The furniture in the house was covered. But it 
was evidently a splendid house; the house of some 
one old and rich. The friend of these exiles in 
Paris had been a grandee; but I thought, from his 
surroundings, of an effeminate and decadent taste. 
I found the room to the right at the first landing 
and went in. There before me was the single 
great window. The sun of the afternoon, filtered 
through the heavy curtains, made a sort of golden 

217 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

twilight. And I paused for a moment, with my 
hand on the handle of the closed door. 

The furnishings in this room were also covered. 
But I could see it was no man’s apartment. It 
was the boudoir of a woman. It was mellow with 
age and in the refined taste of one long accustomed 
to the luxuries of life. The Russian who had 
received here the exiled savant and his daughter 
was a strange exotic thus to surround himself with 
this effeminacy. 

But such reflections were of no concern. 

I went over to the window. The casement board 
came up easily when I put the blade of my knife 
under it, and there, as though hastily thrust into 
concealment, was a necklace of great Oriental 
pearls. 

I lifted it out and gathered it into my hands; it 
filled them—a fortune! 

At this moment I heard a faint sound behind 
me. I turned, my fingers a mass of jewels. 

Before the door, the heels of his boots together, 
stood Monsieur Jonquelle, his body in the act of 
that mocking genuflection. 

“Ah, Monsieur!” he said, “how great a thing 
this love is! Blind and with the strength of Sam¬ 
son ! It ejects the great-aunt out of life, and sends 
the nephew to the service of distressed damsels 
and paralyzed old men. But also it is blind! 
Hieroglyphics spelling out an English word for 

218 





The Problem of the Five Marks 


the direction of a Russian lady does not seem 
queer to him; and doors unlatched for his con¬ 
venience in the heart of Paris. . . . ” 

His voice was oiled with vitriol. 

“But I felicitate Monsieur. He has made a 
perfect bait about our wolf trap for the cheetahs, 
and he finds the necklace that the Service de la 
Surete could get no track of. . . . It was this 
necklace, Monsieur, that we were seeking; its pur- 
loiners have been always in the hollow of our 
hand . . . and Monsieur finds it for us, here in 
his great-aunt’s house!” 

I stammered in my profound amazement. 

“My great-aunt’s house!” 

“Why, certainement!” He continued in his 
acid voice: “And in the very room in which she 
died, when she awoke to find the cherished gift 
of her long dead lover vanished!” 

I stammered on: 

“You mean . . . you mean . . . the Russian 
savant and his daughter robbed her!” 

He put out his hands with a great gesture of 
rejection. 

“Ah, no! How blind this love is! . . . The 
robbery was accomplished by old Dutocq, who 
used to be a concierge in the wing of Archeology 
at the Louvre, and the American actress, Grey- 
smith, called ‘Dolly Deep Dimple’ in the ‘Review 
of Toy Land.’ ” 






X.— The, Man with Steel Fingers 

The great drawing-room through which Mon¬ 
sieur Jonquelle advanced was empty. 

But it was not silent. A vague music, like some 
weird conception of Hoffman, seemed to feel 
about the room, extending itself—a thing that 
crept blindly and disturbed as though it would 
escape from something that followed it tirelessly 
and invisibly. 

It required the fingers of a master, on the board 
of a keyed instrument, to produce these sounds. 
They came from the room beyond, a second 
drawing-room looking out on the Bois de 
Boulogne. 

Monsieur Jonquelle^ had not allowed the serv¬ 
ant to announce him. 

“One is not permitted to disturb Lord Valleys 
at this hour,” the servant had said. 

Monsieur Jonquelle’s card had added to the 
man’s perplexity. One was also not permitted to 
deny an entrance, anywhere, at any hour, to the 
Prefect of Police of Paris. The man had made 
a hopeless gesture, like one resigning himself to 
the inevitable. 


220 


The Man with Steel Fingers 


And so Monsieur Jonquelle had entered. 

It was a beautiful house beyond the Arc de 
Triomphe, built by that extraordinary Brazilian 
who had married two princes, divorced them both, 
and gone elsewhere on her search for new sensa¬ 
tions. 

It was of pale rose-colored stone with a great 
court, a wide, circular stairway, and these exqui¬ 
site drawing-rooms now empty but for the price¬ 
less furniture and this haunting music. 

Monsieur Jonquelle, after the door had closed 
behind him, remained for some moments quite 
motionless in the eddy, as one might write it, of 
this strange, weird music, in which there was 
always a note of ruthless vigor—a note of bar¬ 
baric vigor, harsh and determined. 

Monsieur Jonquelle could not place the music 
in any remembered composition. It was not the 
work of any master that he knew. It was an irm> 
provisation of the fingers that produced it. And 
perhaps for that reason the Prefect of Police gave 
it close attention. 

Presently he advanced into the room from 
which the music issued. He paused a moment in 
the doorway, watching the figure with white, 
nimble fingers hard as steel. Then he spoke. 

“Your pardon, Monsieur,” said the Prefect of 
Police, “I am desolated to disturb you.” 

The man at the piano sprang up and turned 

221 


i 




Monsieur Jonquelle 


swiftly as though his body accomplished the act 
with a single motion. 

To the eye, the man was strange. His shoul¬ 
ders were very broad and stooped; his face was 
wide, massive—the face of a Slav. His hair was 
thick, close and heavy, but it was not long, and 
affected no mannerisms. 

The man was very carefully dressed, after the 
English fashion, and with its well-bred restraint. 
But the impression he gave one was decidedly not 
English. It was that of a Slav adapted to an 
English aspect. 

The eyes one did not see. One rarely saw 
them. They seemed to be hidden by heavy lids 
like curtained windows. And there was no ex¬ 
pression in the face. The face was a mask. It 
seemed always in repose. The big nose, the 
square, brutal jaw, and the wide planes of the face 
were white as with a sort of pallor. Monsieur 
Jonquelle had a sudden, swift impression. The 
man before him was either the greatest criminal 
or the greatest genius that he had ever seen. 

Jonquelle had also* a further impression of 
failure. He had meant to startle this man, and 
observe what followed. And he had startled him; 
but untrue to every experience, there was nothing 
to observe. The man’s face remained without an 
expression; he was behind it hidden from every 
eye. It was a mask that could not be changed by 

222 





The Man with Steel Fingers 


the will of another. Monsieur Jonquelle won¬ 
dered in what manner it would change at the will 
of the man that it so admirably obscured. It was 
a thing he was not interested to discover. 

It was only for an instant that the man was 
without expression. Then he smiled and came 
forward into the room. The smile began with a 
queer lifting of the lip and extended vaguely with 
but a slight changing of the man’s features. 

His voice, when he spoke, was low, well modu¬ 
lated and composed. His manner was easy and 
gracious. 

“Ah!” he said, “it is Monsieur Jonquelle, the 
Prefect of Police of Paris. I am honored.” 

He placed a great chair by the window. It was 
a carved, heavy chair upholstered in a superb 
tapestry, a chair that servants did not move in a 
drawing-room. But Lord \ alleys placed it by the 
window easily, as though its immense weight were 
nothing to him. 

He indicated the chair with a gesture and with¬ 
drew to another beyond the window a little be¬ 
yond the light of it, beside a curtain. 

Monsieur Jonquelle removed his gloves; he sat 
a moment twisting them in his fingers like one in a 
certain embarrassment. His host, also seated, 
regarded him with the vague smile which appeared 
now as a sort of background on the mask of his 
face. The Prefect of Police hesitated. 

223 


1 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


“Monsieur,” he said, “I have called upon you 
for an opinion upon a problem which has always 
perplexed me. It is a problem upon which the 
opinions of persons without experience are wholly 
without value, and unfortunately, all those who 
have had experience and were, therefore, able to 
give me an opinion, have been always persons 
lacking in a certain element of intelligence. I have 
not had the opinion of a man of intelligence, who 
was also a man of experience, upon this problem.” 

He paused. The man before him did not reply. 
He waited as in a profound courtesy for Monsieur 
Jonquelle to complete the subject with which he 
had opened his discourse. He had taken a small 
chair, and he sat in it as a man of great strength 
and vigor and of an unusual bulk rests his weight 
upon something which he is uncertain will support 
it. He did not move, but the expression in his 
face changed slightly. His eyebrows lifted as in 
a courteous inquiry. Monsieur Jonquelle went on. 
He seemed not entirely at ease. 

“I shall not pretend an ignorance of your 
affairs, Monsieur. The law courts of England are 
brutal and direct. They have no consideration 
for any one, and the press of those islands has a 
less restraint. When one is charged with a crime 
in England, and comes into its courts, no humilia¬ 
tion is neglected. That one is innocent, means 
nothing; that this innocence is presently demon- 

224 





The Man with Steel Fingers 


strated does not preserve one, in the events pre¬ 
ceding such a verdict, from every imaginable 
humiliation.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle continued to hesitate. But 
he went on. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “out of this unfortunate 
experience you will have come, I feel, with a cer¬ 
tain opinion upon the problem which disturbs me. 
And I am sure, Monsieur, you will not deny me 
the benefit of that opinion.” 

The Prefect of Police looked up like one who 
with hesitation requests a favor from another. 

Lord Valleys replied immediately. 

“I shall be very glad to give you my opinion 
upon any point in the matter,” he said. “Surely 
I have been spared little. I have had every experi¬ 
ence of humiliation. The criminal law of England 
is a bungling and cruel device. Those who find 
themselves concerned with it, I profoundly pity. 
There is no consideration of family or culture that 
in any way mitigates its severity or in any direc¬ 
tion preserves one from odium, once the machinery 
of a criminal court of England is on its way. The 
experience of it is a horror to me, Monsieur; but 
if it can result in any benefit to you or to another, 
I am willing to recall it. What is the prob¬ 
lem, Monsieur, upon which you would have my 
opinion?” 

“It is this, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect of 

225 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


Police. “Is it your conclusion, upon this experi¬ 
ence of life, that there is a Providence of God that 
undertakes to adjust the affairs of mankind—to 
assist the helpless and to acquit the innocent—or 
do you believe that it is the intelligence of man 
that accomplishes this result? . . . What is it, 
Monsieur, that moves behind the machinery of the 
world—chance, luck, fortune or some sort of 
Providence?” 

Lord Valleys seemed to reflect while the Prefect 
of Police was speaking, and he now replied with 
no hesitation. 

“Chance, Monsieur,” he said, “is unquestion¬ 
ably the greatest and most mysterious factor in 
all human affairs, but it is modified and diverted 
by the human will. . . . Human intelligence, 
Monsieur, and chance are the two factors.” 

The Prefect of Police continued to look down 
at his hands. 

“I have been of a different opinion, Lord 
\ alleys, he said. “I think there is an intention 
behind events, a sort of will to justice, to righteous¬ 
ness, as one has said. It is not chance as we usually 
define the word, and the human will cannot circum¬ 
vent it. . . . It is strange, as I see it, Lord Val¬ 
leys. This thing we call human intelligence seems 
to be able to aid, to assist, to advance the vague, 
immense, persistent impulse behind events, and 

226 





The Man with Steel Fingers 


to delay and to disturb it, but not ultimately to 
defeat it. 

“Take the extraordinary events that have hap¬ 
pened to you, Lord Valleys, and tell me, if you 
can, how they could have arrived by chance! 

“Your uncle, Lord Winton, took the title and 
the whole properties of your family by the acci¬ 
dent of birth. Your father, the second son, hav¬ 
ing no title and no fortune, entered the diplomatic 
service and was allotted to one of the little courts 
of southeastern Europe. He married your mother 
there, and you were born and grew up in the 
atmosphere of Serbia. There was little chance 
that you would ever have this fortune or title. 
Lord Winton had two sons; one of them married 
an American; the other remained unmarried. 
There were three lives between you and this title 
and its immense estates in England. . . . What 
chance was there, Monsieur, that these persons 
would be removed and these benefits descend to 

you?” 

He paused. 

“But they were removed, Monsieur, and the 
benefits have descended. The war appeared. 
Both sons of Lord Winton lost their lives in it; 
Lord Winton is himself murdered; and you come, 
Monsieur, from a paupered kingdom of south¬ 
eastern Europe to be a peer of England with an 
estate. Even the American grand- 
227 


immense 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


daughter of Lord Winton takes nothing under 
this extraordinary English law of entail. Would 
you call this chance, Monsieur ?” 

Lord Valleys found no difficulty at all with the 
inquiry. He replied directly. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “it was all clearly chance 
except the murder of Lord Winton. That was, 
of course, design—a design which the wise Eng¬ 
lish authorities attributed to me, and which they 
spared no effort to fix upon me. That they were 
unable to do so is not, I think, attributable to this 
thing which you call Providence. It is attributable 
rather, I think, to the intelligence of my legal 
counsel and to myself.” 

He looked directly at Monsieur Jonquelle. His 
big, placid face lifted; his voice was even and 
unhurried. 

“I am not embarrassed to discuss it, Monsieur,” 
he continued. “When the war had ended with 
the death of Lord Winton’s sons, I was, by virtue 
of what you have so aptly called ‘the accident of 
birth,’ next in succession to the title. I thought it 
both advisable and courteous to present myself 
to Lord Winton, and I went to England for that 
purpose. 

“Lord Winton was an eccentric person. As he 
grew older, and after the death of his sons, his 
eccentricity became more dominant. I did not 
find him on his estates at Ravenscroft; he was at 

228 




The Man with Steel Fingers 


this time in London in a little old house which 
the family has always owned in a street toward 
Covent Garden. 

“On the night that I called to see Lord Winton, 
it was quite late. I found him alone in the house. 
He seemed disturbed to see me, but he was cour¬ 
teous, and I cannot complain of his welcome. 
He seemed, however, not to realize that I had 
grown into a man. He seemed to regard me as a 
queer, foreign lad to whom he owed some obli¬ 
gation of hospitality.” 

Lord Valleys stopped. He leaned a little for¬ 
ward in the chair, and his voice took on a firmer 
note. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “I am saying to you now 
a thing to which I testified at the English trial, 
and which was not believed. Lord Winton told 
me that he expected a person to call on him within 
a very few minutes and to remain for perhaps an 
hour. He asked me to return at the end of an 
hour. I got up to go. As I went down the stair¬ 
way, a motor, entering the street from the direc¬ 
tion of the City, stopped before the door. The 
door was closed but the sound was clearly 

audible. 

Winton, who was behind me, also came 
down the steps. On a console in the hall were 
several candles which the servants, according to 
custom, had placed there. An idea came to Lord 

229 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


Winton, for he stopped me as my hand was on 
the door to go out. He took up one of these 
candles in a tall brass candlestick, and touching 
me on the arm, handed it to me. 

“ ‘Instead of going out,’ he said, ‘suppose you 
go down into the wine cellar. There should be 
some bottles of Burgundy of a famous year 
stored there by your grandfather. See if you 
can find them, and we shall have a glass of wine 
with our talk. I have a great deal to say to you, 
my nephew. The wine will sustain us.’ 

“You will see, Monsieur, that this idea that I 
was merely a grown-up lad, come to visit an 
ancient relative, was quite fixed with Lord Win- 
ton. As the servants had gone out, he was send¬ 
ing me, as though I were a lad from Eton, to 
find the wine for our conversation. He gave me 
the key, a direction about the steps and doors. 
He even said there was a box of biscuit on the 
dining room table which I should bring up. It 
was all, you see, Monsieur, quite as though I 
were an under-graduate from some English public 
school.” 

The man looked down at his firm, placid hands 
resting upon and obscuring the arms of the chair 
in which he sat. 

“This, Monsieur,” he said, “is a portion of 
my evidence which the English criminal court 
refused to believe. It was incredibly stupid!” 

230 






The Man with Steel Fingers 


Monsieur Jonquelle looked up sharply at that 
sentence. 

“The English criminal court,” he said, “was 
even more stupid than you imagine. It was, as 
you have said, ‘incredibly stupid.’ ” 

Lord Valleys made no comment. 

“There was only my word for the statement, 
he said. “I could not prove it, and yet it was 
the truth.” 

The man was startled by Monsieur Jonquelle s 
reply. One knew that, although one would have 
been troubled to describe the evidence. 

“It is precisely the truth,” said Monsieur 

Jonquelle. 

Lord Valleys looked steadily at the Prefect for 

a moment before he spoke. 

“I regret, Monsieur,” he said, “that you were 

not present in that English court.” 

The man looked down again at his wonderful 
hands, steel strong, and as supple as silk; then 
he w T ent on: 

“It happened, however, that this chance, which 
you question in human affairs, came to my aid. 
One of the Metropolitan police on duty on this 
night in the neighborhood of Covent Garden saw 
a motor drive away from Lord Winton’s door. 
The time, as nearly as could be fixed, corre¬ 
sponded with the hour which I had indicated in 
my testimony. And for the first time in the 

231 








Monsieur Jonquelle 


course of the criminal trial, the case for the 
Crown was shaken. Neither my solicitors nor the 
Crown were able to discover anything further. 
The driver of the motor could not be located, 
and the one who called that night upon Lord Win- 
ton remained a mystery.” 

Lord Valleys continued to speak deliberately 
and without emotion. 

“I do not know who this person, with whom 
Lord Winton had a midnight appointment, could 
have been, and I do not know what occurred at 
that mysterious conference, except, of course, the 
resultant tragedy, which was afterwards known 
to every one. 

“I took the candle which Lord Winton gave 
me and went along the hall to the stairway, which 
descended into the basement of the house. I had 
in my hand the key to the wine cellar. 

The last I saw of Lord Winton in his life 
was his tall, bowed back as he stooped to open 
the door, his hand on the latch. He seemed a 
sort of heavy shadow outlined against the door 
in the dim light of the gas jet that burned feebly, 
lighting the hall behind him.” 

He made a vague gesture, lifting one of his 
hands softly from the arm of the chair. 

Here, ^Monsieur, chance or my intelligence 
failed me. If I had remained a moment—if, in 
fact, I had looked back as I went down the stair- 

232 






The Man with Steel Fingers 


way at the end of the hall, I should have seen 
Lord Winton’s assassin.” 

The Prefect of Police made no comment, and 
Lord Valleys continued: 

“After some little difficulty, I finally found the 
door to the wine cellar, opened it and entered. 
It was very old—one of those huge stone cells 
which the early English built in their houses in 
which to store the choice wines of France. 

“It seemed to me that this wine cellar had not 
been entered in a long time. I was mistaken in 
this impression. Fortunately for me, it had, from 
time to time, been looked into by Lord Winton’s 
manservant. I have said ‘fortunately,’ because 
this manservant, Staley, was able to confirm my 
statement. 

“The whole of the low vault was cluttered with 
straw, piled and heaped with it, like a farmer’s 
rick. It was this aspect of the place that gave 
me the impression that it had not been entered for 
a long time. And it was true that it had not been 
disturbed for a long time. The walls and the 
floor of this cellar were stone; the ceiling was of 
wood crossed with beams dried out like tinder, 
and the bins, as I have said, were heaped with the 
straw in which innumerable wine cases had been 
packed. 

“Lord Winton had described the wine which he 
wished so that I could not mistake it. But he was 

2 33 





■ra—a————————— ———— 

Monsieur Jonquelle 


not certain in which bin it was to be found, and 
I had to make a search of very nearly the whole 
of the cellar. This did not disturb me, for Lord 
Winton had fixed an hour as the length of the visit 
of the person whom he expected, and who, in 
fact, had arrived. And I was not to return until 
that time. It was, as nearly as I can determine, 
about eleven o’clock of the night when I went 
down the steps to the wine cellar.” 

The man remained silent a moment as if in 
some contemplation. Finally he continued: 

“An unfortunate accident occurred. In rising 
from a bin over which I had been stooped, the 
candle touched a wisp of straw hanging from 
above, and immediately the dried-out, half-rotten 
wood of the beamed ceiling flashed into flame.” 

He paused again. 

“I was appalled, but I did not lose my sense of 
necessity. I undertook to put the fire out. I 
made a desperate effort against it, there in that 
underground cell, for I knew the house must burn 
if this whole wood ceiling took fire. The place 
filled with smoke. It became very nearly impos¬ 
sible to breathe, but I did not give up the fight 
against the fire. Finally when I was blinded, 
choked and very nearly unconscious, I broke open 
the door leading from the basement of the house 
and ran out into the street. It seemed that I 
should never breathe, and I continued to run. 

234 






The Man with Steel Fingers 


“You know what followed. I was taken up by 
one of the Metropolitan police; the burning house 
was entered, and Lord Winton brought out. He 
was dead! The small blade of a knife had been 
driven into his body low down on the right side. 
The wound, ranging upward, was deep. It had 

severed a vital artery.” 

Lord Valleys got up. He did it softly and 
apparently without any effort, as one merely 
changes his position in a chair. He had been 
seated, and instantly he was standing. He had 
the aspect of one intending to accomplish some 
act in the room, but pausing to complete his story 

before he went forward. 

“It was to be expected, Monsieur, that the 
English court under these circumstances would 
try me for the murder of Lord Winton. I had 
both the motive and the opportunity to accomplish 
it, and the circumstances were, to say the least, 
indicative. And I should have been convicted for 
that murder but for two directions in which chance 
helped me, and a third in which the intelligence 
of my legal counsel was able to establish my inno¬ 
cence beyond any question. 

“To my surprise, this manservant, Staley, came 
forward to establish the fact that the wine cellar 
was little less than a straw rick, and this Metro¬ 
politan police officer appeared to say that he had 
seen the motor leaving Lord Winton’s door 

235 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


shortly before the fire was discovered. These 
facts indicated the truth of my statement. 

“A further fact brought out by my legal ad¬ 
visers established with mathematical accuracy the 
fact that I had not dealt Lord Winton the blow 
that ejected him out of life. The wound which 
had caused his death had been made with the 
small blade of a knife. The police found in my 
pocket a knife with a small blade, a blade of about 
the width of the wound. No evidence of blood 
was found on this knife, but the police professed 
to believe that it had been carefully washed. 
They thought traces of moisture remained on it. 
The case seemed convincing. I myself realized 
its gravity, and but for one fact a conviction 
might have followed. The autopsy showed that 
the wound which had caused the death of Lord 
Winton was seven inches deep. The handle of 
the knife with which it had been accomplished had 
not entered the wound. The wound was no larger 
than the width of the small knife blade at its ex¬ 
terior point.” 

Lord Valleys suddenly extended his hand, like 
one who puts down something that is finished. 

“It therefore followed, Monsieur, with mathe¬ 
matical accuracy that no verbal conjecture could 
ever obscure, that the knife blade with which this 
wound had been accomplished was at least seven 
inches in length. The knife blade found on my 

236 





The Man with Steel Fingers 


person by the Metropolitan police was only four 
inches in length. It was, therefore, certain, as 
certain as only a mathematical calculation can be 
certain, that Lord Winton was not killed with the 
knife which I carried. 

“And I was therefore acquitted. . . . You 
know, Monsieur, what the English law courts say: 
l A man may lie, but circumstances cannot.’ I 
may have lied, and Lord Winton’s manservant 
and the Metropolitan police who saw the motor 
drive away on that night; but the science of mathe¬ 
matics could not lie. A wound seven inches deep 
could not be made with a knife-blade four inches 
long. And the case ended.” 

He went over to a table, got a tortoise shell 
box delicately inlaid with silver, opened it and 
presented it to Monsieur Jonquelle. 

“You will have a cigarette, Monsieur?” he said. 

It is also possible that he wished to see what 
it was that Monsieur Jonquelle observed on the 
opposite side of the street. For some time he 
had occasionally looked that way. Nothing was 
to be observed there—women, children passed 
Two young men, elegantly dressed, coming up on 
either side, had stopped and were engaged in some 
animated discourse. 

Monsieur Jonquelle took the cigarette, and 
Lord Valleys went back to the chair. 

“Monsieur,” said the Prefect of Police, “do 

237 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


you have any idea who this mysterious assassin 
of Lord Winton was?” 

“I do not,” replied Lord Valleys. “There was 
much conjecture at the trial, but it was all wholly 
conjecture. It must, however, have been some 
powerful person, because the assassin must have 
held Lord Winton with one hand and driven in 
the knife with the other. The experts pretended 
to find evidence of bruised places, as from a pow¬ 
erful hand.” 

Then suddenly, as out of some inciting memory, 
the man’s voice changed. 

“A moment ago, Monsieur, when I mentioned 
the arrival of the visitor at Lord Winton’s house, 
and the doubt of the English court of that fact, 
you said it was true. How do you know that it 
was true, if I may be permitted to inquire?” 

The Prefect of Police balanced the cigarette a 
moment in his fingers before he replied. 

“I know your statement about the motor is 
true, Monsieur, because I know who it was that 
came to Lord Winton on that night. And, Mon¬ 
sieur, it is on behalf of this person that I have 
come to you to-day.” 

Lord Valleys was astonished, but he did not 
move, and his expression did not change. 

“You amaze me,” he said. “Upon what mis¬ 
sion from this mysterious person could you come 
to me?” 


238 





The Man with Steel Fingers 


“Upon the same mission,” replied the Prefect 
of Police, “with which that person went on the 
fatal night to Lord Winton’s house in Covent 
Garden. Lord Winton promised to do a certain 
thing for this, as you call it, ‘mysterious person.’ 
He died before it could be carried out, and I 
have now come to you to fulfill it. I trust, Mon¬ 
sieur, that you will not deny me.” 

Lord Valleys’ astonishment was now profound, 
but he continued to give no evidence of it. His 
voice remained low and conventional. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “this suggestion seems 
preposterous. Why should I carry out something 
which Lord Winton promised, and why should 
you come to me from his assassin? 

“I do not come to you from his assassin, re¬ 
plied Monsieur Jonquelle, “but I do come to you 
to carry out what he promised. As you have 
taken the properties and the title of Lord Winton, 
you should assume, also, his obligations.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle rose. He took a folded, 
legal paper out of his pocket and presented it to 

Lord Valleys. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “Lord Winton promised 
to execute this indenture. He died before his 
signature could be attached to it. I must ask 

you to execute it in his stead. 

Suddenly, as once before on this morning, Lord 
Valleys, who had been seated the instant before, 

239 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


was now, with no motion that seemed visible to 
the eye, standing on his feet. He came forward, 
took the paper which Monsieur Jonquelle held in 
his hand, and going over to the table, unfolded 
it and stooped over it. He was some time in an 
inspection of the document, and in the meantime 
Monsieur Jonquelle had made a gesture, as of one 
flicking the ashes from a cigarette through the 
open window into the Bois de Boulogne. The 
two young men in their animated discussion in¬ 
stantly crossed the street and entered the house. 

Presently Lord \ alleys rose from his stooped 
posture. He was shaken with astonishment, but 
there was of this astonishment no visible element, 
either in his appearance or in his voice. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “this is a deed drawn by 
an English solicitor, conveying all of Lord Win- 
ton s estates in England to his granddaughter, 
Barbara Westridge. Why, Monsieur, should I 
convey these estates to this American girl? They 
have descended to me by inheritance. One does 
not alienate his lands without a cause.” 

I will suggest a reason,” replied Monsieur 
Jonquelle. “This is in accordance with Lord 
Winton’s promise. You stand now in Lord Win- 
ton s stead, and as I have said, you have received 

his benefits, and you should assume his obliga¬ 
tions.” 

Lord Valleys looked at the Prefect of Police. 

240 






The Man with Steel Fingers 


“You do not suggest a legal obligation, I 
imagine.” 

“I do not,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle. “But 
I suggest that the moral reason is compelling, and 
you will not deny me I” 

Lord Valleys smiled—that vague smile which 
seemed not to disturb the features of his face. 
He folded the deed together in his hand. 

“You must permit me to decline, Monsieur,” 
he said. 

He paused a moment, and the background of 
his face hardened. 

“And you must overlook it, Monsieur,” he 
said, “if I feel that your whole suggestion with 
respect to this matter is not convincing. This girl 
could not have assassinated Lord Winton.” 

“She could not,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle. 
“Lord Winton was killed by some powerful assas¬ 
sin who seized him, compressed his body and 
drove in the knife.” 

He turned now toward Lord Valleys, his face 
firm. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “will you carry out the 
obligation of Lord Wanton and leave the matter 
of his assassin a mystery, or will you refuse it 
and have that mystery solved?” 

The man at the table looked strangely at Mon¬ 
sieur Jonquelle. He had the aspect of a creature 
of great strength, concerned always with conceal- 

241 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


ing it. He was puzzled and disturbed, but his 
voice did not change. 

“You know, then, the assassin of Lord Win- 
ton?” 

“I do,” replied the Prefect. “Shall I name 
him to you ?” 

The man made again the vague gesture with 
his white, steel lingers. 

You may keep the secret of the name, Mon¬ 
sieur, he said, “if you will be kind enough to 
tell me the thing that indicated to you the name.” 

“With pleasure,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle. 
“1 ou have said that the English criminal courts 
are stupid, and I have concurred in that opinion. 
Observe, Monsieur, the evidence of that stupidity. 
This criminal court could not understand how a 
knife blade four inches long could inflict a direct 
wound seven inches deep. They measured the 
knife blade and the wound, these English, and 
wrote it down impossible. . . . But you, Mon¬ 
sieur, who are Slav, and I who am Latin, would 
hardly arrive at this conclusion. For we would 
reflect that a knife blade four inches long, driven 
into the soft tissues of the body compressed to¬ 
gether by the impact of a powerful blow might 
easily leave a wound measuring seven inches in 
length behind it—when that compression was re¬ 
leased and the tissues relaxed. It is a fact, Mon- 

242 



The Man with Steel Fingers 


sieur, that the Service de la Surete has frequently 
demonstrated.” 

The man at the table was motionless, as in 
some indecision. He did not change. He re¬ 
mained only in a sort of dreadful immobility, and 
he seemed in this immobility to consider some des¬ 
perate hazard. He was awakened by the two 
young men from the Bois de Boulogne, who now 
entered the drawing-room. 

“Monsieur,” said the voice of the Prefect of 
Police, “I feared that I might not be your equal 
in all directions, and I have asked these two 
agents of the Service to come up. They will also 
be useful as witnesses to the indenture.” 

Lord Valleys made no reply. He opened a 
drawer of the table, took out a pen and attached 
his signature to the deed—waited until the wit¬ 
nesses had signed it, blotted it carefully and fold¬ 
ing it together, handed it to the Prefect of Police. 

“I purchase immunity,” he said, “from a second 
trial before the English criminal court!” 

Monsieur Jonquelle received the indenture and 
put it into his pocket. He took up his gloves, his 
hat, his stick; then he smiled. 

“You purchased, Monsieur,” he said, “a thing 
that you already possess. It is the law of Eng¬ 
land that one who has been acquitted of a crime 
cannot again be tried in her courts for it!” 






XI .—The Mottled Butterfly 

The opera had opened. The music began to 
fill the corridors. But Monsieur Jonquelle did 
not go in. 

He remained idling in the foyer, a cigarette in 
his fingers, his manner and air a well-bred, bored 
indifference. The whole house was crowded. 
There was not a vacant seat. 

It was the last performance in Paris of 
Madame Zirtenzoff’s Salome. 

A few belated persons passed Monsieur Jon¬ 
quelle and entered the doors to the boxes. Some 
of these persons addressed him; all regarded him. 
He was a well-known figure in Paris. His friend¬ 
ship was worth something, and whether one knew 
him, or cared to know him, all were curious about 
the man. 

The vast music assembled and extended itself. 

The foyer became empty, and still Monsieur 
Jonquelle did not go in. Perhaps it was because 
Madame Zirtenzoff had not gone on. She was a 
famous beauty; her Salome had the abandon 
which stimulated even the jaded nerves of France. 

244 


The Mottled Butterfly 

It had been on at the Opera for fifty days, and 
Pans was still keen to see it. 

The woman was a Russian exotic, one of those 
alluring creatures that always assemble a fabulous 
legend. There was a wild passion in her Salome y 
and her conquests were the gossip of Paris. 

The opera had continued for perhaps thirty 
minutes. Madame Zirtenzoff had come on; her 
voice, like a silver bell, reached Monsieur Jon- 
quelle clearly where he sauntered in the foyer. 

Presently the door to a box opened and one of 
the pages of the theater appeared with an im¬ 
mense bouquet of orchids. The flowers were 
worth a thousand francs. They could have been 
grown in Paris only with extreme care and under 
every perfection of light and temperature. It 
was a mass of flowers that would have drawn the 
attention of anybody, exquisite orchids of the 

genus Oncidium Kramerii, called the Mottled But¬ 
terfly. 

^ It seemed to have drawn the attention of Mon¬ 
sieur Jonquelle. He stopped the page as he 
passed him. 

“Gargon,” he said, handing him a piece of gold, 
“find me a box of cigarettes before you go on 
with those flowers. Quickly—run; I will hold 
them until you return.” 

The boy knew the great chief of the Service 
de la Surete. For a moment he was uncertain 

24 5 



Monsieur Jonquelle 

what to do; he had been sent to deliver these 
flowers to Madame Zirtenzoff. There was a gen¬ 
erous gratuity behind the direction, but it was not 
more than Monsieur Jonquelle’s gold-piece, and 
besides, one does not disobey the Prefect of Police 
of Paris. 

He gave Monsieur Jonquelle the bouquet of 
orchids and disappeared down the stairway. He 
was gone hardly a moment; when he returned, 
Monsieur Jonquelle had not moved from his po¬ 
sition by a pillar of the foyer. He handed back 
the orchids to the page and received the box of 
cigarettes. 

He paused a moment, fingered the box but did 
not open it; instead he walked a few steps down 
the foyer and entered the box from which the 
page had come out with the orchids. 

One looking on would have wondered why the 
Prefect of Police required a pack of cigarettes, 
at the cost of a ten-franc gold-piece—especially 
as, after having turned it in his hand, he had put 
it carelessly into his pocket and entered a box. 

It would appear that he waited for these cigar¬ 
ettes before entering the box. But to what end? 
One could not smoke in a box at the Opera, at its 
most expensive point in the ultrafashionable au¬ 
dience of Paris. Although the great opera house 
was packed with people,—not a vacant seat visible 

246 





The Mottled Butterfly 


to the eye,—there was but one person in the box 
which Monsieur Jonquelle entered. 

He was a person that any one would pause 
almost anywhere to observe. He was young; he 
was exquisitely dressed—a dress in which there 
was some of the over-extravagance of detail, that 
suggestion of elegance, which the Parisian cannot 
avoid. The severity of the English tailor he must 
always modify; he must be permitted to add a 
jewel, a bracelet—some feminine touch. 

He was a young man and extremely handsome, 
a blond French type with a dainty mustache and 
regular Italian features, and thick, soft, yellow 
hair presenting the gloss of the seal’s coat. In 
his physical aspect, for perfection of detail, the 
man had no equal on the Paris boulevards. 

It had got him a rich American wife and lifted 
him, as by a fairy lamp, out of the sordid environ¬ 
ments of an old family in decay. The thing 
seemed a piece of the design of a Providence 
with an esthetic sense. 

This exquisite person would have been incon¬ 
gruous except in an atmosphere of wealth. He 
had an apartment now beyond the Arc de Tri- 
omphe, one of those wonderful apartments that 
the American invasion after the Great War had 
set up in Paris. 

The Marquis was the envy of the boulevardier. 

But it was rumored that he had not the free- 

247 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


dom of his wife’s money-sacks. He got what she 
allowed him, but it ought to be written here, in 
justice to the Marquis, that it was not he who com¬ 
plained. Why should he? The allowance was 
evidently enough for any reasonable man. He 
had the best of everything; if he felt any sense 
of stint, there was no sign either by word or act. 

In form the Marquis was above reproach. 
There could be no surprise to the fashionable au¬ 
dience of Paris in the fact that the Marquis was 
alone in the box. His wife was on a visit to 
America, and it was better fitting that the Mar¬ 
quis should be alone than to be with another who 
might console him for his wife’s absence. If the 
Marquis was not the best of men, he was at any 
rate not the least discreet. 

He rose and bowed when the Prefect entered. 

“Ah, Monsieur,” he said, “I am charmed to 
see you; Madame Zirtenzoff will be worth even 
an hour of the priceless time of the Prefect of 
Paris. ... I shall be honored to have you as 
guest; pray sit down.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle sat down. He looked a 
moment over the vast audience, brilliant and dis¬ 
tinguished; a moment at Madame Zirtenzoff on 
the distant stage; and then he addressed his host. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “Madame Zirtenzoff is, 
I imagine, beyond rubies. But I have not come 
here to observe her; I have come to ask you about 

248 





The Mottled Butterfly 


the robbery in your apartment. That was an 
extraordinary robbery.” 

“It was most extraordinary, Monsieur,” re¬ 
plied the Marquis. “The whole of Paris re¬ 
gretted that you were out of France at the time. 
Where were you, Monsieur?” 

Then the Marquis added with a laugh: 

“You cannot be expected to tell that; you pro¬ 
tect us, Monsieur, by your mystery. If the Lecca 
could say, ‘To-morrow Monsieur Jonquelle will be 
in Brussels,’ we should not have a jewel or a five- 
franc piece remaining to us.” 

“Alas, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect, “you do 
me too much honor; there are a number of very 
good men with the Service de la Surete, quite as 
capable as I to protect Paris.” 

The Marquis laughed. 

“You have an affection for your associates, 
Monsieur Jonquelle, that I fear clouds your in¬ 
telligence. Nothing could have been managed 
with more stupidity than the investigation of my 
apartment. In your absence, Monsieur, you can¬ 
not imagine into what hopeless commonplace the 
investigation of a criminal affair in Paris can de¬ 
scend. 

“Alas, Monsieur, there is a gulf fixed between 
Alexander and the lieutenants of Alexander! But 
for my own feeble efforts, nothing would have re¬ 
sulted from the police investigation in my apart- 

249 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


ment. The necklace of diamonds which the Mar¬ 
quise purchased for five hundred thousand francs 
—assembled from the crown jewels of Russia— 
would have disappeared without a clew to the 
thief. As it happened, he was brought to justice; 
he confessed and was sentenced for an incredible 
period by the court. But for me”—and again 
the Marquis laughed—“there would have been 
no thief sentenced. . . . Your inspectors, Mon¬ 
sieur, were ridiculous.” 

There was humility in the Prefect’s reply. 

“And the Marquis Chantelle was magnificent! 
His fame in the affair has reached me; he is the 
admiration of the Surete! I have come, Mon¬ 
sieur, to verify the details, and from yourself. 
I do not know what rumor may have added or 
omitted.” 

He bowed slightly, like one who would add a 
gesture of compliment to his words. 

“Willingly, Monsieur,” replied the Marquis. 
“I shall be charmed to verify details; but you will 
pardon me if I am moved to ask you for your 
opinion on a certain phase of this mystery. You 
must have an opinion, Monsieur, if you do not 
have an explanation, in fact.” 

He turned a little in his seat. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “how did it happen that 
when we had fixed this robbery upon Jean Lequex, 
a member of the Lecca, he admitted it before the 

250 





The Mottled Butterfly 


court, and asked for an immediate sentence? But 
he would admit nothing else; he would not say 
what he had done with the necklace or where 
it was? 

“That was a strange position for a man to 
take, Monsieur. He could hope nothing from 
the judge. Why confess? It did not lighten his 
sentence; and after all, our evidence against him 
was circumstantial. Why did he not say what 
he had done with the necklace? The judge would 
have reduced the sentence. Why conceal it, Mon¬ 
sieur, and go for this long period of servitude? 
Did he hope to escape?” 

Monsieur Jonquelle spoke with decision. 

“He did not.” 

“Then, Monsieur,” continued the Marquis, 
“why did he refuse to say where the necklace was? 
Of what service would be the necklace to him 
after twenty years?” 

Again Monsieur Jonquelle replied directly and 
with decision. 

“Of no use, Monsieur; the man did not expect 
it to be of any use to him.” 

“Then, Monsieur,” continued the Marquis, 
“why in the name of heaven did he not say where 
this necklace was, and thereby reduce his sen¬ 
tence?” 

Monsieur Jonquelle seemed to reflect. 

“You have asked for my opinion,” he said; 

251 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

“I think I can do better than give an opinion. I 
think I can tell you precisely the reason why Jean 
Lequex, when he confessed this crime before the 
court, refused to say what had become of the 
necklace.” 

He smiled. 

“But I must be permitted, Monsieur, to hold 
this explanation as a sort of wage against the de¬ 
tails of your story. The Service de la Surete is 
filled with admiration for you; you must omit no 
item of the narrative. . . . Ah, how enchanting 
Madame Zirtenzoff is! Hair like a sunburst of 
dreams, and the figure of a dryad! One would do 
murder for her.” 

The Marquis laughed. 

“Murder, Monsieur?” 

“Ah, yes,” replied the Prefect, “murder or any 
lesser crime.” 

The Marquis looked the Prefect frankly in 
the face. 

“You believe this robbery was committed for a 
woman?” 

“Could jewels be intended for any other?” 
replied Jonquelle. 

The Marquis continued to regard the Prefect 
with a certain interest. 

You mean,” he said, “that the reason why the 
Apache, Jean Lequex, did not tell what he had 

252 





The Mottled Butterfly 


done with the necklace was, in fact, because he 
had given it to a woman?” 

The Prefect of Police looked at the Marquis 
with some concern, with, in fact, a certain element 
of wonder. 

“Why, no, Monsieur, that is not the reason at 
all.” 

The Marquis seemed puzzled. 

“Do you generalize, then, to no definite pur¬ 
pose?” 

“By no means,” replied the Prefect of Police. 
“I would generalize to the solution of this mys¬ 
tery; and with Monsieur the Marquis’ aid, I think 
we can arrive at it.” 

“Monsieur,” replied the Marquis coldly, “I be¬ 
lieve the mystery has already been concluded; I 
believe its solution seems complete.” 

“ ‘Seems,’ ” repeated the Prefect of Police, “is 
the word precisely. While it is true that the 
criminal, Jean Lequex, has confessed before the 
court and been sentenced to a term of years for 
the robbery of these jewels, the jewels remain to 
be discovered.” 

He paused and regarded the Marquis with an 
expression of compliment. 

“We feel, at the Service de la Surete, that if 
we could bring to the remaining feature of this 
matter the same degree of excellent acumen that 
was brought to its initial stages, by the Marquis 

253 



Monsieur Jonquelle 


de Chantelle, we should be able to restore the 
necklace to the Marquise upon her return from 
America. She returns to-morrow, does she not? 
It seems a brief time for so difficult an undertak¬ 
ing.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle smiled. 

“I regret to intrude upon your pleasure, Mar¬ 
quis, and especially on this, the final night of 
Madame Zirtenzoff’s triumph—amazing woman, 
adorable woman! One should lose no moment 
of her excellence.” 

He paused. 

“But Monsieur, I cannot adequately admire 
your excellent handling of this matter unless I am 
quite certain that I have the details of it cor¬ 
rectly. Permit me, Monsieur, to repeat these 
details, and correct me, I beg of you, if I should 
present them with an item of inaccuracy. I was 
absent and I have only the memory of inferiors.” 

The Prefect of Police rested his arm on the 
seat of the box, while the Marquis fingered his 
monocle idly, twisting the silk cord. He assumed 
an attitude of careless attention, and Monsieur 
Jonquelle went on: 

“On the night of the eighteenth of February, 
Monsieur le Marquis, opening the door of his 
apartment at a late hour, saw a slip of paper beside 
the door. At the moment the Marquis gave this 
item no attention; it did not impress him. It was 

254 





The Mottled Butterfly 


late, the servants having retired, and the Marquis 
withdrew to his bedroom alone. It appears, how¬ 
ever, that digressions of the mind occur to all of 
us, even to the Marquise de Chantelle, on the 
border of dreamland. It occurred to him that 
this slip of paper was a memorandum by the con¬ 
cierge to call the attention of the Marquis upon 
his arrival to some inquiry that had been made 
for him. The Marquis, however, did not arise 
at that hour to verify this impression, but in the 
morning when he awoke, he remembered it, and 
going into the drawing-room in his dressing-gown 
and slippers—it was before the arrival of his 
valet—he found the slip of paper where it had 
remained as though it had been slipped under the 
door. 

“The Marquis was surprised when he came to 
examine this bit of paper. It contained some 
numbers written with a pencil, and the words in 
a strained, unformed hand: ‘The combination of 
the safe of the Marquise de Chantelle.’ Monsieur 
turned at once to the small safe which is built 
into the wall of the apartment after the American 
fashion. He tried the combination written on 
the slip of paper, found it correct, opened the safe 
and discovered that the necklace had disap¬ 
peared.” 

The Prefect of Police hesitated in the narrative 
and addressed an inquiry. 

255 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

“It is true, Monsieur,” he said, “that you did 
not know the combination of this safe, that the 
combination was known only to your wife, the 
Marquise, and that more than once, for example 
at the Cafe Anglais on the fourteenth of December 
at midnight, when any creature from the under¬ 
world of Paris might have been present, you spoke 
of the danger of keeping this necklace in a small 
private safe in the apartment when it should be 
deposited with a banker? But to these objections 
the Marquise always returned the same answer— 
that she alone had the combination of the safe. 
This is true?” 

“It is true,” replied the Marquis. “But it was 
not discreet, as after-events have demonstrated. 
Perhaps by these discussions we gave information 
of the whereabouts of this necklace to this Apache 
Lequex.” 

The Prefect of Police made a vague gesture 
and continued to speak. 

“The Marquis, upon discovery of the robbery, 
at once notified the Service de la Surete ; old For- 
neau and an agent arrived immediately. Upon 
examination of the bit of paper, it proved to be a 
slip bearing the name in print of Moore-Poole 
& Company, a firm of American brokers in Paris. 
Old Forneau at once suggested that the robbery 
must have been committed by some one from the 
office of these brokers, probably an American, 

2 56 





The Mottled Butterfly 

since the slip of paper must have come from some 
one employed in the establishment. But here the 
Marquis de Chantelle, showing an intelligence su¬ 
perior to that of this officer of the Surete, pointed 
out that no one would come on such an adventure 
bringing with him a piece of paper, and especially 
an indicatory piece of paper, upon which to set 
down such a memorandum. It was far more 
likely that the piece of paper had been acquired 
somewhere in the apartment. 

“He then suggested that an inquiry be made 
to discover whether some one from this American 
firm of Moore-Poole & Company had not at one 
time occupied an apartment in the building. For- 
neau acted upon this suggestion and ascertained 
that Monsieur the Marquis was correct. He dis¬ 
covered a quantity of these blank printed slips in 
the basement of the building, where, with other 
rubbish, they had been retained by the concierge 
to kindle fire in the furnace. Thus Monsieur the 
Marquis at one stroke removed any suspicion that 
might have been attached to this firm of brokers 
and confined the inquiry to some one having ac¬ 
cess to the building and knowledge of it, else he 
would not have been in the basement where this 
debris from the apartments of old tenants had 
accumulated. 

“The query as to how the robber had obtained 
access to the Marquis’ apartment on this night 

257 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


now advanced itself. There is no key to these 
apartments except the one delivered to the tenant 
by the bank making the lease; and when the door 
is closed, it is locked from the outside—that is 
to say, the knob of the door does not turn on the 
outside; it turns only on the inside, so that it can 
always be opened from the inside, whether locked 
or not. It cannot be opened from the outside 
because the handle of the doorknob, as I 
have said, does not turn. How, then, would this 
robber enter the Marquis’ apartment? Again the 
Marquis was able to give Forneau an explanation. 

“On the evening of the robbery, it was his in¬ 
tention to remain in his apartment. He had dis¬ 
missed his valet and the servants and was alone. 
Later he changed his mind and concluded to go 
out. Upon reflection he remembered that he did 
not entirely close the door; but it was a thing 
which did not at the moment impress him. It 
was his habit always, of course, to close the door, 
and he had closed it, but upon returning for a 
glove, he had left the door ajar. This he was 
afterward able to establish because of a trivial 
incident. He remembered the glitter of the elec¬ 
tric light on the point of a gold frame at the 
corner of the drawing-room table. It caught his 
eye as he descended the steps. But it did not im¬ 
press him with the fact that he had neglected en¬ 
tirely to close the door. It impressed him merely 









The Mottled Butterfly 


as an incident which he afterwards remembered, 
and he continued to descend. 

“It now occurred to Forneau that this robbery 
had been committed by some one of the hotel 
thieves of Paris, who were accustomed to enter 
any building which they were able to get into, 
and to search any apartment that they happened 
to find open. But the Marquis reminded Forneau 
that the person committing this robbery had 
brought with him a piece of paper from the base¬ 
ment, that mere thieves entering on the chance 
of finding some valuables would not have taken 
this precaution. Forneau recognized the wisdom 
of this suggestion, and he inquired of the Marquis 
upon what theory the investigation should pro¬ 
ceed. 

“The Marquis now pointed out that this rob¬ 
bery must have been committed by some one fa¬ 
miliar with the building, some one who knew the 
habits of the tenants and was in a position to 
await a favorable opportunity; otherwise he could 
not have taken advantage of this one occasion on 
which the door to the Marquis’ apartment hap¬ 
pened not to be closed. This theory pleased For¬ 
neau, and he adopted every excellent suggestion 
which the Marquis was able to make. But he 
ventured to wonder from what source the thief 
had been able to obtain the combination to the 
safe, since it was known only to Madame the Mar- 

259 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


quise. The Marquis was again able to indicate 
a valuable suggestion. Women, he pointed out, 
had always the same habits. They did not trust 
their memories for anything that required an accu¬ 
racy of numbers. The Marquise would have 
somewhere this memorandum written down. He 
suggested that Forneau make a search of her 
writing-table. 

“To their surprise they found the lock to the 
drawers of this table broken, and among some 
papers hastily turned over, at the back of one of 
these drawers, a small book with a red leather 
cover. On the last page, in pencil, was precisely 
the same memorandum which the Marquis had 
picked up on the slip of paper under the door— 
the combination to the safe of the M^arquise de 
Chantelle, and following the four columns of 
four figures. It was now clear that the robbery 
had been committed as the Marquis had suggested 
—by some one in the building who had the leisure 
to watch and who was familiar with the habits of 
the tenants. It was not certain, of course, that 
this person would know that the necklace was in 
the safe, but he would be convinced that the safe 
held some objects of value. 

“The problem which now presented itself was 
to discover what employee in the building could 
have written this memorandum. Forneau and 
the Marquis had before them the handwriting 

260 






The Mottled Butterfly 


They were familiar with the history and associ¬ 
ates of the valet, the concierge and the older em¬ 
ployees, and were convinced that it was not one of 
these persons; but there were other employees in 
this apartment, and the problem was how to ob¬ 
tain specimens of their handwriting without in¬ 
curring suspicion. In his perplexity Forneau 
asked the opinion of the Marquis de Chantelle. 

The Marquis suggested the following clever 
device: The Service de la Surete should send an 
agent to the building pretending to be an official 
of the government concerned with certain mental 
tests required, in order to register citizens for the 
electorate. Among other tests, he should require 
them to write the name of the president of France 
and that of the premier at the close of the war. 
This would include the names of Millerand and 
Clemenceau, and by this means they could obtain 
the M of the word Marquise and the C of the word 
Chantelle, which had been written by the unknown 
thief upon the memorandum which contained the 

combination of the safe.” 

The Prefect of Police stopped. The attention 
of the Marquis de Chantelle seemed to have 
passed from the narrative to a contemplation 
of the opera. 

Madame Zirtenzoff was at the point of her 
greatest scene. Her voice filled the immense 
house like a silver bell, like innumerable silver 

261 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


bells*—a quality of the human voice that no other 
diva had ever brought to Paris. Her youth, her 
alluring beauty, added to the enchantment. 

Monsieur le Marquis de Chantelle was looking 
at her, one hand fingering his mustache, the other 
turning the monocle at the end of the silk cord. 
The Prefect of Police did not interrupt the ab¬ 
sorption, but he continued to speak. 

And as it happened,” he said, “it was the 
ingenuity of this device suggested by the Marquis 
de Chantelle that enabled Forneau to locate the 
one who had committed the robbery. He found 
an employee lately taken on by the concierge be¬ 
cause he offered to assist in cleaning the building 
at a lower cost. The agent from the Service de 
la Surete came to this person in the course of his 
interview with the employees of the building. 

“ ‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘I am compelled to ask 
you to submit to some mental tests, but I will 
make them brief. Tell me the form of govern¬ 
ment under which we live and write down for 
me the name of the president of France and 
that of the premier who conducted the peace terms 

in the Great War, and I will give you no further 
annoyance.’ 

“The man replied that France was a republic 
and wrote the name of Alexandre Millerand. But 
when he came to write the C in Clemenceau, he 
hesitated. The agent seized him at once, snapped 

262 






The Mottled Butterfly 


a pair of handcuffs on him and confronted him 
with Forneau. He was shown the slip of paper 
which the Marquis had picked up in his apart¬ 
ment. He was told the details of the crime as 
he had carried it out; in his confusion, he con¬ 
fessed.” 

The Prefect of Police continued to speak slowly 
without a change of accent as if to himself. 

“The Marquis was astonished when Forneau 
brought the confessed thief before him; like the 
usual amateur, he could not realize that his meth¬ 
ods had succeeded; he could not believe that he 
had been so brilliantly correct in his deductions. 
He was amazed. He sought to test now every 
item upon which he had depended, to present its 
weakness, its doubt; and when he found the re¬ 
sults inevitable, he washed his hands of the affair.” 

The Prefect introduced a comment without in¬ 
terrupting the monotony of his discourse. 

“It was the tender, the considerate heart. The 
solution of a criminal mystery is a problem, but 
the criminal is a man to suffer!” 

He went on: 

“Monsieur le Marquis will remember the 
Apache’s confession: he had obtained a position 
in the building and had watched the Marquis’ 
apartment. As it happened, the night of the rob¬ 
bery was not the first time that the Marquis had 
left the door unclosed; a week before, he had left 

263 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


it unclosed in the afternoon. It was then that this 
man had gone in,—taking with him a slip of paper 
from the basement—broken open the Marquise’s 
desk and searched for the combination, which he 
finally found and wrote down. The search had 
required a very long time, and he had not time 
on this day to open the safe. He had taken the 
paper with him and waited until this night on 
which the Marquis had again gone out, leaving 
the door unlatched. Then he had opened the 
safe and removed the necklace. He thought that 
in putting the necklace into his pocket he must 
have pulled the slip of paper out, and by this 
means it had fallen to the floor where the Marquis 
had picked it up. 

‘ The man made no defense and waived all legal 
procedure. He confessed and has been sentenced 
to a term of imprisonment. But he refused to 
say what he had done with the necklace.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle closed his narrative. For 
some moments he had been speaking in a casual 
voice as to a person who did not listen; and in 
fact, the Marquis de Chantelle had ceased to 
listen. He was entirely occupied with Madame 
Zirtenzoff, with her divine voice in the fairyland 
of the magnificent stage setting. 

There was a moment of suspense. 

She was about to dance before Herod, her body 
proportioned like a dryad’s, supple in the nearly 

264 





The Mottled Butterfly 


naked costume of the East, commanding the ex¬ 
clusive attention of the whole of Paris packed in 
the opera house. 

The Marquis de Chantelle, oblivious of Mon¬ 
sieur Jonquelle, was awaiting the presentation of 
his bouquet of orchids. They should arrive at 
this moment. 

He watched to see what sign Madame Zirten- 
zoff would give him before she swayed into the 
divine dance that had entranced Herod. 

Monsieur Jonquelle, watching the Marquis, 
took a box of cigarettes out of his pocket and 
slipped his thumb-nail around the stamp, but he 
did not open the box. He spoke suddenly to the 
Marquis de Chantelle; his voice was sharp, clear, 
and its tones arrested the man’s attention. 

“Monsieur le Marquis,” he said, “Madame 
Zirtenzoff will not be pleased with her bouquet 
of orchids.” 

The Marquis turned suddenly on him; his eyes 
were now contracted with an intense expression. 

“You know, Monsieur, that I have sent a 
bouquet of orchids to Madame Zirtenzoff?” 

“Surely, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect of 
Police. “I passed the boy departing with them 
when I entered. They were very lovely, superb, 
exquisite, the Mottled Butterfly! How aptly 
adapted is that flower to Monsieur le Marquis I” 

The Marquis continued to regard him. 

2 65 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


“And why, Monsieur, do you compare me with 
this variety of orchid?” 

“If you will tell me, Monsieur le Marquis,” 
replied the Prefect of Police, “why Jean Lequex 
refused to say where the necklace was that he 
had stolen, I will answer your question.” 

The hauteur in the Marquis’ voice was now 
distinctly audible. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “it was you who promised 
to tell me that.” 

“And I shall tell you,” replied Jonquelle. “Jean 
Lequex refused to say where the necklace was for 
the very good reason that he did not know where 
it was.” 

Monsieur Jonquelle looked the Marquis stead¬ 
ily in the face. 

“The agents of the Surete neglected to mention 
to Monsieur an item or two of their discoveries: 
the writing on the slip of paper had been made 
with the left hand; and the concierge, as it hap¬ 
pened, seeing the Marquis Chantelle go out leav¬ 
ing his door ajar, closed it. 

“Ah, Monsieur, we have been engaged in a bit 
of comedy. Pardon us if we have deceived 
you. ... It was I who conducted the investiga¬ 
tion of your affair, disguised as Forneau; and it 
was the agent Forneau disguised as Jean Lequex 
who confessed to your robbery and took a mock 
sentence of imprisonment under an arrangement 

266 





The Mottled Butterfly 


with the court. . . . We did not find, then, the 
thief who opened the safe to your apartment.” 

The Marquis regarded the Prefect of Police 
with an amazed expression, his lips parted, his 
eyes wide. 

“Then, Monsieur,” he stammered, “you have 
discovered neither the thief nor the necklace.” 

“Ah, yes,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle in the 
modulated voice of one who bids another adieu. 
“We have discovered both.” 

He took a mass of jewels out of his waistcoat 
pocket and handed them to the Marquis. 

“I found these in the bouquet of orchids which 
you were sending to Madame Zirtenzoff. May I 
trouble you to present them to Madame la Mar¬ 
quise when she shall return from America to¬ 
morrow?” 





XII .—The Girl with the Ruby 

The carriage was now hidden by the wall. 
And without thinking, without stopping to con¬ 
sider how strange my words must appear, I spoke 
the thing—the thing that had seemed a profound, 
inexplicable puzzle to me: 

“Why do you marry this Norwegian woman?” 

Tea had been served on the terrace of the villa 
during the formal call of the Ambassador and 
his daughter. And while they remained, and 
now that the carriage, in which they returned to 
the city, was a mere sound of wheels on the hard 

Cimiez road, I was occupied by this disturbing 
query. 

The old Ambassador did not concern me. He 
was not a factor in the problem. But why my 
host, at his age, after his experiences of life, with 
his taste refined and exacting, should at last de¬ 
termine to marry this big, flax-haired, silent crea¬ 
ture of the white North, was a problem that fin¬ 
ally forced itself into words. 

I sat beside one of the little iron tables on the 
terrace. The Prince Dimitri was walking slowly 

268 


The Girl with the Ruby 


along the whole length of the villa on the red tile 
that made a band of color against the white walls. 
The villa looked out over the sweep of the Medi¬ 
terranean. Below, hidden by the vines and olive 
trees, was Nice. On the left, like a white ribbon, 
the Corniche road ascended into a gap of the 
mountain on its way to Mentone. And west of 
it, like a mirage—like an illusion—was the ruined, 
abandoned, fairy city of Chateauneuf. 

I think he was the handsomest man in Europe. 
Middle age had merely served to refine the 
strength of his features. He was not poor. The 
upheaval of Russia had not wholly stripped him. 
Long before it came he had laid down a sort of 
partnership with Ravillon, the great jeweler on 
the Rue de Rivoli and the Place Messina. It was 
a trade that the war had not impaired. It left 
the prince in command of his villa, his house in 
Paris and an income. 

He did not stop in his measured, reflective step 
at my inquiry. It was only when I added the four 
final words that he paused and turned about to 
regard me. 

“Do you love her?” I said. 

“Love?” He repeated the word slowly, softly, 
as though it were the potent element in some 
magic rune. 

“Ah, no, my friend,” he said, “I do not love 
her.” 

269 


< 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


From every standpoint of material interest this 
marriage was desirable and excellent. The Nor¬ 
wegian woman was a royal princess and, like the 
young man in the Scriptures, she had great pos¬ 
sessions; but these considerations did not seem 
sufficient. 

“Then why did you arrange this marriage?” I 
said. 

The man came back to where I sat, his hands 
linked behind him, his face reflective. 

“Why does a man in peril,” he said, “protect 
himself with a bolted door?” 

I was profoundly astonished. 

“Peril?” I repeated. “You in peril?” 

“In the very deadliest peril, Monsieur Jon¬ 
quelle,” he said. 

He went into the salon of the villa and pres¬ 
ently returned with the most extraordinary photo¬ 
graph that I have ever seen. It was long and 
narrow, about four inches in length and perhaps 
an inch and a half in width. Three views of a 
woman’s face appeared on this photograph; both 
of the side views and the full view. 

The side views were upon the ends of the photo¬ 
graph, and the full face in the center. The photo¬ 
graphic work was good—that is to say, it had 
been taken with an excellent lens by a skilled pho¬ 
tographer; but it lacked every evidence of those 

270 





The Girl with the Ruby 


artificialities with which smart photographers add 
illusions to the human face. 

The photographs were clear, hard and accurate, 
with no softening shadows. The board on which 
they were printed seemed ordinary and common, 
but the frame around this cheap board was a gold 
band studded with rubies. It was a wonderful 
frame, as beautiful as the best workmanship could 
make it. 

But it was not these considerations which im¬ 
pressed me. It was the human face that appeared 
in these three contrasted positions. It was the pic¬ 
ture of a young girl, her hair simply arranged as 
though she had not yet escaped from the discipline 
of a convent. 

It was a face of exceptional beauty. One 
never could wish to change a line or a feature of it. 
Its bony structure was perfect. But there was 
something more than this mere structural excel¬ 
lence. There was the lure of an indescribable 
charm in the face—a charm that one could not 
separate in the expression from a profound inno¬ 
cence of life. One felt that the lure of this human 
creature must be extraordinary to appear thus im¬ 
pressive in the hard, garish outlines of this photo¬ 
graph. 

The picture held my attention. I put it down 
on the table, only to take it up again. And the 
man watched me as one might watch in another 

271 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


the effect of a drug which he had amazingly expe¬ 
rienced in himself. 

I continued to examine the photograph, and 
the one profound conviction that possessed me 
was that here, preserved on the cheap surface of 
a photograph board, was a woman with every 
quality of alluring, feminine charm; every quality 
that the big white, silent Northern woman amaz¬ 
ingly lacked. And I wondered whence this 
strange, harsh photograph had come, and why the 
man before me had inclosed it in a frame of jewels 
and kept it as one preserves a treasure. 

The prince sat down beyond me at the table. 
For a time he was silent; then, suddenly, he began 
to speak. 

“One morning,” he said, “in the early spring¬ 
time, I was idling in Ravillon’s shop on the Rue 
de Rivoli. We had been considering the importa¬ 
tion of jewels. Some shipment from Amsterdam 
had come in and the shop was preparing for its 
usual summer trade with America. I had come 
out from the manager’s room when I saw a girl 
pass the door. She looked in as she passed and, 
after she had gone a few steps beyond, hesitated, 
turned about and finally came timidly into the 
shop.” 

He paused and got a cigarette from a tray on 
the table, lighted it and held it a moment in his 
fingers. 


272 





The Girl with the Ruby 


“It was the girl you have just seen in the photo¬ 
graph. She was very plainly dressed. It was the 
sort of clothing that showed the evidences of gen¬ 
tility, I thought—and poverty. She wore a little 
piece of fur. It was old, and the seams of her 
dress had been cleaned and pressed until the 
fabric looked as though it would give way if an 
iron were again set on it. 

“She asked to see a manufactured ruby of about 
two karats. The clerk was not impressed to con¬ 
sider her as a possible purchaser. He thought 
she was one of the class of poor shop girls in 
Paris who endeavor by this means to satisfy their 
curiosity about jewels. The women of Paris who 
buy manufactured jewels do not have the appear¬ 
ance of this girl.” 

Here the prince paused and touched the cigar¬ 
ette to his lips. 

“But there was something about this woman,” 
he said, “that profoundly disturbed me. I did not 
know what it was. I do not now know. But it 
was something independent of her appearance, 
although her appearance was remarkable enough. 
Her hair was the exquisite mahogany of a horse- 
chestnut, with that incomparable gloss which the 
shell of the nut bears when it first escapes from 
the hull. Her complexion was pale, almost as 
pale as plaster, and her eyes were blue—the blue 
of a Delft plate. 


273 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


“I found myself wondering what race the girl 
was of. She seemed a sort of blend. I thought 
it was French or Italian and some other blood— 
some blood not of a tame, conventional race. 

“The clerk laid a piece of black velvet on the 
table, brought some manufactured rubies and 
placed them before her. The girl sat down at 
the table and I went over and stood beside her. 
She selected one of the stones and asked the price, 
which was more than five hundred francs. She 
seemed very much disturbed at this. She inquired 
if the stone could not be purchased for five hun¬ 
dred francs. She put her hand into the bosom of 
her blouse, took out a little purse and emptied it 
on the table. It contained five hundred francs 
in gold pieces. 

“For reply the clerk said that the stone could 
not be purchased for a less sum. But I inter¬ 
rupted him. I said she might have it at the price. 
It was then, it seemed, that she became aware 
of my presence for the first time. She got up and 
began to express her appreciation of my kindness. 
She seemed embarrassed, like a child who does 
not know precisely how to go about such a con¬ 
vention; and now that she spoke directly to me 
the charm of her personality was even more in¬ 
conceivably impressive. 

Then she made what we considered an extraor¬ 
dinary request. She wished to know if we could 

274 






The Girl with the Ruby 


Identify this stone. It was not clear why she 
wished to identify it. We got the impression that 
she intended to bring it in again later and she 
would like us to be certain to identify it. The 
clerk would have got rid of the matter in the 
easiest way he could, but I compelled him to con¬ 
sider it. It w T as a good deal of trouble to under¬ 
take to establish sufficient data for the identifica¬ 
tion of this manufactured stone. We had to make 
a very careful record of its exact measurements, 
the dimensions of its facets and so forth. 

“I explained this to the girl; she listened atten¬ 
tively. She then asked for a duplicate of our rec¬ 
ord of identification, and I had this given to her. 
She went out of the shop with the manufactured 
ruby wrapped up in the duplicate of the record 
which we had made out for its identification.” 

Again the prince stopped, and flicked the ash 
from his cigarette. He remained for a moment 
looking out over Nice, at the vast sweep of the 
Mediterranean wrinkled by the touches of the 
mistral. 

“I should have followed her,” he said; “it was 
stupid to permit her to escape out of my knowl¬ 
edge, but under the charm of the girl I seemed 
incapable of any practical measure. I think at 
the moment she did not seem precisely real. She 
was like a fairy woman—something one had 

275 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


longed for—appearing unexpectedly by virtue of 
an incantation. 

“A moment later, when I went to the door of 
the shop to look, she was nowhere to be seen. 
She had vanished, but the spell with which I was 
enveloped did not vanish. It remained. And I 
came every day to the shop in the Rue de Rivoli 
under the hope that she would return. 

“I had a strong basis for the hope, and I clung 
to it as a drowning man would cling to a life line. 
The stone would come back for identification 
some time, and by that clew I would find her 
again. I ought to have gone to Amsterdam on 
the affairs of the house, and I ought to have re¬ 
turned to my estates in Russia, but I would not 
have missed a day from the shop in the Rue de 
Rivoli for the redemption of the world.” 

He paused. The sun going down behind the 
black ridge of the mountains gilded the fairy city 
of Chateauneuf as though it were powdered over 
with gold dust. The wrinkles on the Mediter¬ 
ranean were breaking into little ridges whitened 
on their summits. The vague touches of the mis¬ 
tral seemed to approach. 

“It is of no use to undertake to explain the 
thing,” he said. “There is no explanation of it. 
Something like the odor of a blossom had reached 
deliciously to every fiber in my body. I was under 
the dominance of a sorcery that no sort of com- 

276 





The Girl with the Ruby 


mon sense could exorcise. I was written to in 
vain from Amsterdam and from Russia. I re¬ 
mained in the shop in the Rue de Rivoli. 

“And I was rewarded for that vigilance. 

“One evening, perhaps a month later, as we 
were closing the shop the girl suddenly entered. 
She welcomed me with a smile. And it seemed 
that all at once, by virtue of that smile, the black¬ 
ness of the pit in which I had miserably dwelt 
was flooded with sunlight. She put on the table 
the ruby and the crumpled paper which bore our 
duplicate of identification. And she asked us to 
look again at the stone. 

“I did not look at the ruby. 

“The girl alone occupied my attention exclu¬ 
sively. I wished to impress forever on my mem¬ 
ory every detail of her. The sheen of her hair, 
the deep vivid blue of her eyes, and her incom¬ 
parable mouth, innocent like a flower. 

“It was some time then before I realized that 
the clerk was calling my attention to the jewel. 
He seemed to be very much astonished. What 
he was saying was: 

“ ‘But this is not a manufactured ruby; it is a 
real ruby.’ 

“The girl sprang up at the word. 

“ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘is it true? Is it real?’ 

“The clerk asked me to examine the stone, and 
I did examine it. Every expert in the shop exam- 

277 






Monsieur Jonquelle 

ined it. It corresponded precisely to every item 
of our data for the identification of the manufac¬ 
tured ruby. We compared the measurements with 
the most delicate instruments in our possession. 
They were all precisely correct. It was in every 
detail the manufactured stone which we had sold 
to her for five hundred francs. But the amazing, 
astonishing, inexplicable thing was that the stone 
was no longer a manufactured ruby, it was a 
genuine ruby. We applied every test of which 
dealers in jewels have any knowledge. There 
was no doubt about it. The stone was real. By 
some means a manufactured ruby worth five hun¬ 
dred francs had changed into a genuine ruby 
worth twenty thousand francs. 

“The girl seemed transported with delight 
when we told her the result of the test. But she 
made no explanation. She went at once out of the 
shop.” 

The cigarette had burned to his finger tips and 
the prince tossed it over the edge of the terrace 
into the vines. 

“But this time,” he said, “I did not propose 
that the girl should escape me; I followed her. 
She hurried down the Rue de Rivoli and turned 
into the Place de la Concorde. I continued to 
follow her. I don’t think I was very discreet 
about it. I was too anxious to be careful. Pres¬ 
ently she seemed to be disturbed. She had seen 

278 






The Girl with the Ruby 

me crossing the street and knew that I followed 
her. She hesitated, uncertain what to do, then 
she went on swiftly for perhaps a dozen paces. 
She stopped, and I thought she intended to turn 
and come back, but she went across the Rue de 
Rivoli through the gate into the garden of the 
Tuileries. 

“I followed through the gate. 

“She walked rapidly under the horse-chestnuts. 
I had lost all discretion about the matter now, and 
I went on hurriedly, fearful that I should lose 
sight of her for an instant. There is a bench, 
behind some shrubs, looking out toward the Seine. 
She went around the shrubs and sat down on the 
bench. I came up, parted the branches and 
looked through to see what had become of her. 
She was sitting huddled on the bench, her head 
on her arm, crying. I went around and sat down 
beside her. I did not say anything—I did not 
know what to say; there seemed nothing to say. 

“She continued to cry softly for a good while, 
her face on her arm. And the undulation of her 
shoulders, and the tremor of her hand that lost 
itself under the wealth of hair, affected me be¬ 
yond any possibility of speech. I suppose I should 
have sat there until morning—until the world 
wore out turning on its axis—without a word, 
without a motion, enveloped with the sorcery of 

something in this woman. 

279 





Monsieur Jonquelle 

“I don’t know how to describe it; there doesn’t 
seem to be any word in any language to describe it. 
It was as though every cell, every living, organic 
cell that made up the unit of my body, starved; 
had a desperate, primeval, animal sensation of 
hunger. And it was the hunger of panic; it was 
the hunger of long deprivation; a hunger unfed 
from the beginning of the world.” 

The man stopped and got another cigarette. 

“You will say that I was mad, of course. I 
was not mad. I was as sane and intelligent as I 
am now, as I shall be when I marry this Nor¬ 
wegian woman. The thing had nothing to do 
with any sort of madness. It was simply some¬ 
thing that had awakened; something that by the 
gracious beneficence of God is usually kept sleep¬ 
ing in us. I don’t see how it could be explained 
to anybody. If a man were born blind, how could 
one explain color to him? If he were deaf from 
his mother, how could one explain music to him? 
It may be fortunate; it may be out of an in¬ 
scrutable wisdom that the thing is dormant in 
most of us. I don’t know what would happen to 
the world if that thing awoke in everybody as it 
awoke in me on that afternoon in the garden of 
the Tuileries. 

“Of course, it did not awake there; it awoke 
the first time the girl came into the shop, and it 
was waiting when she returned. But it clamored 

280 





The Girl with the Ruby 

now; it clamored like hungry cheetahs before the 
grating of a pit. And yet with all that hell going 
on inside I did not move and I did not say any¬ 
thing. Presently the girl sat up. She wiped the 
tears out of her eyes. I remember it perfectly. 
She had a little handkerchief wadded up in her 
fingers and she dabbed her eyes with it. 

“ ‘Oh, Monsieur,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what 
to do. You will follow me—you will find out 
everything—and you will take it for the use of 
your big shop.’ 

“She repeated it and the tears began again. I 
don’t know what I said; I must have said a good 
deal, and I suppose that it must have seemed im¬ 
pressive. I think it would have seemed con¬ 
vincing, for I was desperately in earnest. No one 
could have been in more deadly earnest about any¬ 
thing. It seemed to me that the most important 
thing in the world, the most important thing that 
would ever be in the world, was to convince this 
girl that she could trust me. 

“I did not know what it was she would need 
to trust me about—I had no idea what thing she 
feared would be taken away or what use the 
house, to which my name was attached, would 
make of anything she knew or had control of. 
But I labored to convince her that anything in 
which she was in any way interested was safe; 
would be made safe. 


281 





Monsieur Jonquelle 


“We must have appeared very curious to any 
one walking through the garden of the Tuileries 

a girl crying on a bench and a man in this 
earnest appeal.” 

Here the prince paused and got another match 
for his cigarette. 

And yet,” he said, “when one stops to think 
about it, that would be the one sort of scene in 
Paris having no element of strangeness. It would 
be simply a scene out of the oldest tragedy of the 
world, to be met with anywhere. There is no 
bench in the whole garden of the Tuileries upon 
which it has not been enacted.” 

He paused. 

“I don’t remember precisely how the thing 
ended, but it was all somehow concerned with 
what seemed to be a surrender to me—a capitu¬ 
lation. Women do things like that. We shall 
never understand the mental process by which 
they arrive at a conclusion to do them. Perhaps 
there is no mental process. I suppose the thing 
is a sort of feeling, or it is a sort of relaxation, 
or it is a sort of abandonment. I don’t know 
what to call it. She would come to-morrow after¬ 
noon to the shop and she would put everything 

into my hands; she would trust me—that is what 
it all summed up to.” 

Night was beginning to arrive—a sort of blue 
deepening, as though the Italian sky descended 

282 







The Girl with the Ruby 


over the Riviera and hardened into sapphire. I 
got the picture and began to look at it again. I 
had not been mistaken. Something of the extraor¬ 
dinary charm which the man before me felt 
himself unable to describe was unquestionably 
present even in this strained photograph. 

The prince went on. He was not looking at 
me. He was looking at the Mediterranean rising 
to meet the descending Italian sky: 

“I was in the manager’s office of the jeweler’s 
shop, on the Rue de Rivoli, the following after¬ 
noon. I was there from midday until the moment 
she came in. It was very late when she arrived. 
The afternoon was nearly gone. The clerks were 
putting up the iron shutters, but they were not 
permitted to close the door. I would have kept 
the door open all the night and all of every other 
night; it should have stood open forever, like the 
doors to the churches of God, until she came in.” 

For a few moments he was silent. Then he 
continued, as though he had omitted a great chap¬ 
ter of description—of the physical description of 
a woman and the analysis of a consuming passion 
—a chapter that I would not understand, a chap¬ 
ter that perhaps nobody would understand: 

“She had a package under her arm wrapped 
up in an old newspaper. It was heavy and she 
carried it very gently. She put it down on the 
manager’s table and then she removed the news- 

283 







Monsieur Jonqueile 

paper and disclosed a copper box. When the lid 
was lifted the box was seen to have two compart¬ 
ments; one of these was of a whitish metal and 
the other some sort of composition. There was 
a glass plate between the two compartments and 
above it what seemed to be a reflector. She 
moved something in the box and a ray, ruby col¬ 
ored, descended on the plate. 

“She explained that her father was an Italian 
chemist. All his life he had been engaged in the 
study of the synthetic chemistry of jewels. He 
held that the manufactured ruby of commerce dif¬ 
fered from the true ruby only in its atomic struc¬ 
ture. And he believed that this atomic structure 
could be made to rearrange itself under the in¬ 
fluence of the true ruby and a kinetic agent. 

“The device in the copper box was the result 
of this theory. If true rubies were heaped around 
a manufactured stone and subjected to the ray, 
the influence of the atoms in the true stones, under 
the light energy, would cause the atoms in the 
manufactured stone to arrange themselves in a 
similar order. 

“This was the explanation of the change that 
had taken place in the manufactured ruby. Her 
father was dead. He had left her this invention. 
She had wished to test it and she had taken the 
five hundred francs which she had received from 
the sale of his books and purchased the ruby. She 

284 





The Girl with the Ruby 


had placed it on the glass plate under this device, 
surrounded it with the little fragments of genuine 
rubies which her father had been able to gather 
up, and the change which we had observed had 
taken place. 

“There had been a rearrangement of the 
molecular structure of the stone. She explained 
that her father had said that the change in the 
manufactured stone would be quicker if the true 
rubies around it were larger, but that he had had 
no money with which to buy large stones and she 
could only work slowly with the fragments which 
he had got. She now put the invention into my 
hands. It was a part of this surrender—this 
abandonment. 

“I called in the manager and the clerks. It 
seemed incredible to us. But all sorts of incred¬ 
ible inventions had come out of Italy. The dis¬ 
coveries of Marconi had put every man where he 
could no longer say that anything was impossible; 
and, besides, we had the concrete evidence in the 
manufactured ruby which had been transformed. 
We put the device into the safe with a manufac¬ 
tured ruby on the glass plate, surrounded with a 
heap of the best oriental stones in our possession.” 

He paused. In the thick light his body had a 
distorted outline. For a long time there was no 
sound. Then he went on: 

“I think, Monsieur Jonquelle,” he said, “that 

285 






Monsieur Jonquelle 


we are never quite prepared for the utter unre¬ 
served surrender of a woman to us, even at the 
end of our most elaborate arguments. The girl’s 
abandonment to my honor had not ended. 

“ ‘And now, Monsieur,’ she said, ‘what are 
you going to do with me?’ ” 

He paused again. 

“I took her to the house of my aunt, the Count¬ 
ess Casseni, on the Bois de Boulogne.” 

He hesitated and his voice thickened. 

“The third patriarch said that the days of his 
life had been few and evil; many and evil mine 
seem! But two moments of them outbalance the 
weight of the years: The moment in the carriage 
when she said ‘I love you!’ and the moment when 
my aunt, the Countess Casseni, took me, softly, 
into the bedchamber, with the balcony opening 
on to the Bois de Boulogne, and showed me the 
girl asleep in the great canopied bed—asleep like 
a worn-out child, her pale face gleaming like a 
flower.” 

Night had descended. It was suddenly dark. 
The man beyond me was only a voice speaking 
in the darkness: 

“I never saw her again!” 

“Never saw her again!” I cried. “Then where 
did you get this picture?” 

“I got it from the rogues’ gallery, of the Service 
de la Surete” he said. “She belonged to the 

286 





The Girl with the Ruby 

White Wolves, the most desperate association of 
criminals in Europe.” 

“But the invention?” I cried. “Was it a hoax?” 

He answered slowly in the darkness: 

“It was by no means a hoax, Monsieur Jon- 
quelle. It would not change a manufactured 
stone into a ruby—the genuine stone the girl 
brought in had been cut in Amsterdam to match 
the manufactured ruby which she had purchased. 
But the invention was effective for its purpose, all 
the same. At three o’clock on that night it blew 
open the vault of our shop in the Rue de Rivoli; 
we lost five hundred thousand francs in jewels.” 

Then suddenly his voice strengthened: 

“But all this would not matter. Nothing would 
matter. If I should ever find her, and I were free, 
I would follow her through the slime of the 
world!” 

“And so,” I said, “you are arranging this mar¬ 
riage as protection against the girl.” 

His voice came softly, like a whisper. “Yes,” 
he said; “that is it—to bolt the door!” 

(I) 


THE END 













NOVELS OF SUPREME LITERARY ART 


THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON 

By EDITH WHARTON 

“I can think of no American npvel, written within 
the last few years, and dealing with contemporary life, 
to compare with it. And not only does Mrs. Wharton 
write better than anyone else, but she knows how to 
unfold a more exciting tale.”—Katherine Fullerton 
Gerould in the New York Times , 

THE MIRACLE 

By E. TEMPLE THURSTON 

A keen, human story of the west coast of Ireland, 
with peculiar fascination in the rich background of 
Irish folk lore. 

THE VAN ROON 

By J. C. SNAITH 

An unusual and totally absorbing plot, delightfully 
told, and' a remarkable set of characters, unmatched 
since Dickens. 

THE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL TEACHER 

By MELVILLE DAVISSON POST 

How would Christ act if He appeared in the world 
today? Through Mr. Post’s story of the Kentucky 
mountains runs an impressive allegory. 

ABBE PIERRE 

By JAY WILLIAM HUDSON 

This charming novel of life in quaint Gascony has 
proved that a novel that is a work of true literary art 
may be a best seller of the widest popularity. 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
New York London 







ABSORBING NEW FICTION 


THE MEREDITH MYSTERY 

By NATALIE SUMNER LINCOLN, author of "The 
Cat’s Paw,” etc. 

Ingenuity in constructing baffling mystery stories and 
skill in narrating them are characteristic of Miss Lin¬ 
coln. Here is one of her best, with some new elements. 
The successful efforts of the blind surgeon to clear the 
girl he loves from a murder charge make a splendid 
story. 

CORDUROY 

By RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL, author of “Play 
the Game,” etc. 

The standards of Boston and of a California ranch 
shrewdly and sympathetically handled in a delicious ro¬ 
mance full of charm and vitality. The efforts of 
“Ginger” and her New England lover to meet each 
other’s requirements result in a tense and appealing 
story. 

MARY CINDERELLA BROWN 

By DOROTHY WHITEHILL 
The remarkable and delightful things that happened 
to Mary Cinderella Brown and Peter Ashton when 
the ragged little girl and the rich young man happened 
to meet at a drama-*- moment. Two kinds of romance 
delightfully unfolded. 

WALTER OF TIVERTON 

By BERNARD MARSHALL, author of “Cedric the 
Forester.” 

A swift moving story of adventure and romance in 
the wild days when Prince John ruled England in the 
absence of Richard Coeur-De-Lion. A picture of life 
in that confused time, with a glimpse at historic charac¬ 
ters, but a thrilling story first nd last. 

THE WOLF TRAIL 

By ROGER POCOCK 

A vivid story of adventure, which covers the sea in 
the wild rough days of sailing ships, and also Indian 
life in the Canadian Northwest. A rich vein of romance 
and of spiritual feeling runs through the action, adding 
a distinctive appeal. 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
New York London 











^ A \\ c oN G **o CV 1 8 * % 

-1 'P <* -3 0° V ^/YTh^, "* Y> 

•p v\ <<. cS^T , * ^(\i//y^ L > * ^ .'S 

'P, <V „ C» ^ .** v *• _, *P, V s 




sV ^ 

V V "V o 

aN0 /\-^ 

^ r ® ^ cT 

Y * * S . ;A£i^ % / ^ v 

® <\V -/> _ Vi - .s ^ 7 Y///&&S$$ » 4 W ./i 

*\ ** % \s 0 s f ^ - vwl\ * j >*. \ 

V ^ 0 N c 4 ' s .</V v '*A 7 ° ■* V’ < u '"* ♦ 

v^ * c^sSNx ° 0 .V s ^797-2-^ . *P .f» 

A\ <c ^STvXW Tro* */* 




^ '-V «^> * 

*. ^ ? ^WWI 

/'.c 0 *' 1 * 'V-'*"' 


s ' ^ > 

?d|> ° x° o<. 

O' «r '^WV ■) c, \W-* o. 

fo*'<, "> ’*' / ‘ * ' •* 




P 

o ^ \V> 

<* ^ <& 
z z 

o ( 1 $ 

N *- / 

u * ae/f?7^ \c V. -V« ^ 



o'?' ,.' 1 * * ^ 

C' *', ,r%.. ^ -f;. 


0 * 

^!" ed U f ing the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing Agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: 

r .A 1 '. Ift iiil^es. 



1997 


Jbbrreeper 

PRESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES, INC 

111 Thomson Park Drive 

n ran horn/ T»»/f-. da ✓ 


r av* 

- v 


111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Twp., PA 16066 ii /* 
(412)779-2111 N J> 


























-p A 


% A 

* * ^ V l 8 

^ .‘ 0 ‘ v* 


v la^a "> ’ ; '°> 0 ', '••;%'*••'' 

K «sgiMW ' - .'O’ 7- ? 5» o -£< 





* 

© 

S V 4 .., A~ 

v A,A >..", > A *’ 


A » f .« 


\V </> 


**'vv^a 




4* A A », 

.., y » • A ■* A A '*, 

A* A ' q N G * >»-s 

" > <A A * 

Kp A ^ <-o 

v- A 


r 4 >* \ 

o Cf 

- o5 A- 

^ \V f Kt. s 

* *1 '*' s *«, 

"C‘ v A ... ^ > 

r . ^ Y. * fV’Y*. " ^ 

• <$> ^ _ 

■A A, ° * ,A 'A- 

, _™ . A’ ^ A <TS> - * ^ ', » - o 

y / A . A «/ y 0 * >A A O A ' s <o' <*■ y o 

oA* ll, « ‘A c» Ne 4 ^ ** -* 

V "/ "A ' rt C-iNrv <* 


'A C- 

>A A 


A ^ A« A>, A c M 


/V ° <?■ A * 

V' * ** 






a ., :e*^A a- r :m^A . 

V /> %. A V' > * A# sS A -*• ✓ /V . Aj > ^ 

, A 'OmO^ A % "».M*' N # s „ '^.'‘.H*’'/ 
'*. > .9 «.<*•* 'c> V v'l/J>, '' ^ * 

* - -A /V A/<\WA A & * 

"a ^ . §mk '"’. ° * ^ l 

\y <f*r. - f :7 .- 0.$ << 




0 4> >. 


- ^ ^ oV ^ "* x 'v, o 

>'/■:;:*>C ,, '// , :.'aA' '/ ' 

A < ••■ V,%- . ' *g( P + ~Kp ^ K '\ 

o «v --: \a'% ^ •>* -V aaa-a /?> ^ \4- V ® /sv 


*' "a.At- 

.R. ' . ^ 


° V, 


V 


r. .v ** 
° z ^iP <v 



^ V * WJW - . v 

o« x ^ A r> o. t ,y \ s x ,G V 

A' c 0 c -p c> .A . <■ 

4 ]^ * ^SNx ^ O 

A k 



"o 0 ^ 

A * 

V X V^i\^ ^ . , T . , 

/* 1 ' ' <1 ^ 0_ /. A'' v C^V y > V'^ <, A 

a**’ n °' 4 *’••- ■%*'"' vA^ 'A 1 '’ ^ a 

V A' r <? 5 » « ^ / A 

,v ^ \ a, a a -<> k- . -i* - ^ 

* rf(\ 88 A o '<p 'A 

'<A ^ 


















































